Pocket Paperbacks and Digital Editions

The Future of the Book
November 19, 2008 | 4 books mentioned 16 2 min read

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What better time than now to bring back the pocket paperback? People have no money to spend on hardcovers, and even the full-sized trade paperbacks are a pricey, given the economic times. There are also strong trends in our society that encourage less waste and the downsizing of our myriad possessions. A return of those classic 6 3/4 inch by 4 1/2 inch volumes, now all but extinct, save for in a few genres and in used book stores, could save paper and space and entice younger readers for whom $25 for a hardcover and $14 for a paperback is too much money to risk.

I’ve written in the past that books are too big — not too long, but too bulky and heavy and expensive — and pined for a return of the pocket paperback, so that carrying a book with you didn’t feel like such a chore. A combination of factors led to the demise of the pocket paperbacks that were prevalent in the middle part of the 20th century. These pocket paperbacks had been sold at newsstands and drugstores rather than bookstores, but as these venues stopped selling books, the pocket paperback market shrunk. Around the same time, a wave of consolidation hit the alternative book distribution network that had sprung up around these pocket editions, shrinking the number of books available, and consolidation among publishers folded the purveyors of the pocket editions into larger publishing conglomerates built on a different business model. Finally, the introduction of the trade paperback — the larger paperbacks prevalent today — squeezed the pocket edition out of the publishing equation except in a few genres — romances and mysteries — that still cling to the similarly-sized mass market format (which you can still see at grocery stores and in airports).

covercovercoverBut perhaps the pendulum will swing back towards pocket editions again. HarperPerennial recently introduced the Olive Editions collection. According to the marketing material, “they fit in your back pocket and only cost ten bucks each.” (And eight bucks on Amazon). So far the line includes three titles, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon, The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, and Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. At 7 inches by 4 1/2 inches, they are a touch larger than the pocket paperbacks you see in used bookstores, and while their cover design is smart looking, they are not as inviting as the pulpy art that used to emblazon even the classics. Nonetheless, they represent a smart move by HarperCollins, and one hopes that they will announce more titles in this format and that other publishers will follow suit.

A full-fledged return of pocket paperbacks would be surprising, however, as ultimately it seems likely that an even smaller format will take center stage, a format that is indeed infinitesimal. With hardware innovations driven by Amazon’s Kindle and perhaps Apple and Sony as well, reading on these devices will become more palatable for a larger percentage of readers. Selection of titles will improve and developments like Google’s recent deal with publishers will further expand the availability of titles in digital formats.

Like many other sectors of the economy, the publishing industry is likely to face serious challenges over the coming year. The silver lining of course, is that this may drive innovation. New formats (digital and tangible) created now may entice a new generation of readers down the road.

created The Millions and is its publisher. He and his family live in New Jersey.

The Future of the Book

Google Books Finds Forgotten Plagiarists

The Future of the Book
November 25, 2006 | 4 books mentioned

At Slate, Paul Collins points out that Google Book Search heralds a new era of outing plagiarists. The searchable database of many thousands of books is a boon to researchers, but it also greatly eases the discovery of co-opted passages. Collins mentions a couple of examples and posits that “given the popularity of plagiarism-seeking software services for academics, it may be only a matter of time before some enterprising scholar yokes Google Book Search and plagiarism-detection software together into a massive literary dragnet, scooping out hundreds of years’ worth of plagiarists – giants and forgotten hacks alike – who have all escaped detection until now.” He also predicts that “in the next decade at least one major literary work [will get] busted.”

The Future of the Book
| 4 books mentioned
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The Future of the Book

Revisiting a Literary Throwdown: Zombie Books for Free

The Future of the Book
July 27, 2009 | 4 books mentioned 1 4 min read

It was a battle between an evangelizing visionary and a sage defender of the past, perhaps the first big tussle in the great sorting out of publishing’s new look in the digital age.This was 2006, when Wired Magazine technology evangelist Kevin Kelly wrote about the helter skelter future of books in the digital age. In the New York Times Magazine, Kelly looked at then still nascent book scanning efforts, and extrapolated a future that sent a shiver through writers, editors, publishers, and many readers:Turning inked letters into electronic dots that can be read on a screen is simply the first essential step in creating this new library. The real magic will come in the second act, as each word in each book is cross-linked, clustered, cited, extracted, indexed, analyzed, annotated, remixed, reassembled and woven deeper into the culture than ever before. In the new world of books, every bit informs another; every page reads all the other pages.Later he added:[Authors] can sell performances, access to the creator, personalization, add-on information, the scarcity of attention (via ads), sponsorship, periodic subscriptions – in short, all the many values that cannot be copied. The cheap copy becomes the “discovery tool” that markets these other intangible valuables.At the annual Book Expo, keynote speaker John Updike responded, heaping scorn: The economic repercussions of this paradise of freely flowing snippets are touched on with a beguiling offhandedness, as a matter of course, a matter of an inexorable Marxist unfolding.Everyone reveled in the literary throwdown at the time (Gawker called it a Crossover Nerdfight). There was no “winner,” however, and neither Kelly nor Updike was proven right, but there are some interesting new developments to contemplate.When Kelly wrote of “remixed” books, many were aghast, envisioning zombified, soulless collages, based on the desecrated works that had been co-opted for profit. They may have been right about the zombie part: At least one book remix has caused quite a stir this year. According to Publishers Weekly, there are “more than 600,000 copies in print of… Jane Austen mashup, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.” A graphic novel version is in the works, as is a sequel, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. Even though this recent example looms large, when you start thinking about it there is a rich history of literary remixes. At the Vromans Bookstore Blog, Patrick Brown recently compiled a thorough exploration of the topic in response to J.D. Salinger’s lawsuit over an unauthorized sequel to his novel The Catcher in the Rye. Though that remix is not looking particularly auspicious, Patrick notes the many venerable and successful remixes that have come before it, from James Joyce’s Ulysses to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked to a pair of recent books by Maile Meloy. Brown doesn’t mention it, but you can even go all the way back to the “first” novel, and look at Don Quixote’s second part as an inspired calling out of unauthorized “copycat” versions of the book. It’s entirely plausible to make the case that literary history is in many ways a history of literary “remixes,” and, as Kelly has suggested, current, ever-stricter copyright regimes are an artificial impediment to this free flow of ideas.Returning to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, silly as it may be, one wonders if the book’s success doesn’t prove there is an appetite – in our heavily remixed, mashed up culture – for freer rein to be afforded writers who want to experiment in this vein. It’s also clear that the public domain offers an unending font of material for those inclined to use it (for a more highbrow example, think of the relationship between Tom Stoppard and Shakespeare). Meanwhile, the Salinger case would seem to indicate that when it comes to books under copyright and the cross-linking, clustering, and reassembling that Kelly prophesied, we are still very much at the whim of the copyright holder.Kelly’s other point – that of a new business model for writers that relies not on selling the book but on using the book to sell “access” to the writer, has been taken up enthusiastically by another Wired guy, Chris Anderson, who has written an entire book on this topic, Free. Anderson is “selling” (read: giving away) the book under this model and his ideas have caused media types quite a bit of heartburn.Interestingly, the backlash to Anderson’s book seems to be resonating (to me, anyway) much more than the book itself. The unfortunate revelation that Anderson had lifted substantial passages for the book from Wikipedia suggests that in a world where writers don’t get paid for writing and information wants to be free, the writing itself is almost beside the point as compared to the ancillary, profit-making schemes that can surround the “author as brand” idea. This criticism would only seem to be confirmed by Anderson’s explanation that there was an oversight in citing the copied passages properly.With a new novel coming soon from our greatest literary recluse, I wonder too whether a flourishing of the idea that authors make money from selling “access” and not books would mean that we could never have another Pynchon or McCarthy or DeLillo whose works alone tower above any notion that they might experiment with alternative revenue models.In the end, there are some elements out of the Kelly/Anderson view of the future of publishing that remain compelling. The remixed book is an important idea that need not be villainized or trivialized, particularly as digitization provides new opportunities for experimentation. The notion of “free,” meanwhile, seems far more potentially damaging in that whole swathes of literary culture are not particularly compatible with the “authors selling access” model. However, if you believe that good writing is always worth something to somebody, you don’t have much to worry about.

The Future of the Book
| 4 books mentioned 1 4 min read
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The Future of the Book

The Future of Publishing?

The Future of the Book
May 16, 2007 | 4 books mentioned 3 3 min read

What’s the pedigree of a bestseller? That’s the question the New York Times asked last week in an article that, despite the endless waves of political scandal, remained on their most viewed list for the better part of a week. The article reveals the seamy side of publishing: publishers have foresworn the metrics used by marketers to study their audiences’ buying habits, because they, much like Creationists, “don’t believe in them,” leading to an industry where million dollar advances are gambled on the Flying Spaghetti Monster of editors’ intuition. So is it any surprise that an article about the billion-dollar, high-stakes world of publishing, with its talk of big bets and horse racing, comes off sounding like a description of a Gambler’s Anonymous meeting? Won’t someone stop the insanity? (Very nicely summed up here, btw.)Enter Macmillan New Writing, the controversial imprint of the British publishing house Macmillan. New Writing was founded to promote works by unpublished writers, particularly writers who have produced the kind of experimental, unclassifiable or controversial books that are worth publishing, but might not have what it takes to become best sellers, in other words, books that don’t have mass market appeal. The imprint publishes one book a month and currently comprises twenty titles, all of which are prominently featured in Macmillan’s catalog. No agents are involved, the publishing house accepts direct submissions, and writers get no advance, but earn 20% royalties.Sounds good, no? But it’s not all upside. Not only are the writers’ contracts non-negotiable, but Macmillan receives all subsidiary rights to the book and a first look at the author’s second book. Critics have reacted strongly, calling the imprint “literary slave drivers” and “vanity publishers,” and indulging in apocalyptic predictions of the end of publishing as we know it. (As if that would be a bad thing. The submissions, at least, are entirely electronic.) The negative press was so strong that the founder of the imprint, Michael Barnard, felt compelled to write Transparent Imprint, a book defending his idea. (Which the imprint, of course, published. See how that works?)Why all the consternation? Sure, novelists lose their right to film rights, translations, and licensed merchandise (Ignatius J. Reilly trebuchets, anyone?), but is that so bad? Without an agent, they wouldn’t be able to sell them anyway, and apparently Macmillan has been doing a good job so far, bagging a movie deal for the thriller The Manuscript and a decent advance on a German edition of the fantasy novel The Secret War. What’s really at stake, it would seem, is the publishing industry’s ego. Despite the fact that their best work is guesswork, they like to believe they know what they’re doing when they get into a bidding war over a total unknown. The novelist Giles Foden, quoted by the Guardian, put it like this, New Writing’s list is like “putting a bet on every horse in the race – but without paying for any of the bets.” And that doesn’t make us feel very special, does it?But, if the New York Times is right, isn’t that what publishers are doing anyway? If advances are the big gambles everyone says they are, then they only serve to make publishers risk averse. Much like Hollywood, which instead of looking for fresh material, increasingly hedges its bets by turning out retreads of once popular comic books and old TV shows, the publishing industry is in a rut. Bestsellers are inherently unpredictable, and yet, if a publishing exec had to choose between a cutting edge novel and another Harry Potter knockoff, you can bet that “Parry Hotter and The Sorcerer’s Merkin” would be the one stacked on the front tables of Barnes and Nobles nationwide. By not giving writers advances, New Writing has found a way around this problem, allowing them to take a chance on a book, while reducing the considerable overhead attached. This system should be a boon for mid-list writers who, it’s often said, are not nurtured by publishing houses in the way they once were. Sure, you’ll hear writers grousing about being unable to make a living from their work, but, with the exception of the biggest literary stars, isn’t that’s how it’s always been? For my part, I’d much rather have my books in print, giving my readership a chance to grow with me. After all, readers will seek out a good writer’s backlist, and every book that sees print should increase royalties from previous efforts. And what a boon for those writers who don’t have the savvy, connections, or good luck to get an agent. Hell, some writers, John Kennedy Toole comes to mind, are literally dying to get published.It’s been over a year since New Writing put out its first book, and the imprint’s list of well-reviewed books seem to be proving the naysayers wrong. The writers’ seem satisfied with the deal (here and here), and if Roger Morris’s Taking Comfort (recently reviewed here at The Millions) is any indication of the quality of the books New Writing has on offer, they’re doing the literary community a real service. It might be time for the rest of the publishing industry to put down their dice and take notice.Bonus Link: The MacMillan New Writing titles currently available in the U.S.

The Future of the Book
| 4 books mentioned 3 3 min read

16 comments:

  2. I always thought the Penguin Great Ideas Series was a nice start, even if it focused on classic and not modern lit.

  3. Ironically, I just wrote a post before seeing this one about how I find these small-sized editions so annoying.

    I see editions of literary fiction in this format occasionally here in Buenos Aires under the label "export" or "open market" edition.

    It's better than nothing, but I certainly am willing to pay a few more dollars for the trade paperback edition. (BTW, abroad the editions are not necessarily any cheaper than the trade editions).

  4. Interesting post indeed, though the question of quality arises: are consumers who are used to the space and cleanliness of trade paperbacks going to go for smaller type and lesser production typically found in these cheaper editions? The question of production and design is ever present in forecasts for e-books too, of course. Haven't readers become savvy about how books are presented to them visually?

  5. Interesting post. As for the Kindle, alas, three months on, mine is still sitting in its box. The whole hook-it-up-to Whisper Net thing… One day…

  6. In Australia we seem to get TPB very quickly as the overseas hardbacks are priced so ridiculously. It's cheaper to personally import titles from Amazon US than to buy the same edition from a local bookstore (even with airmail costs factored in).

  7. I find the mass market-size paperback a handy size to hold, but usually much too bulky to put in any pocket.

    In order to cut down on bulk, the publisher has to reduce the size of the type face and spec very lightweight, cheap paper. I prefer a 6" x 9" trade paperback, which, after a lot of indecision, was the size I chose for my first book as an independent publisher this summer. The Cure for Jet Lag was originally published by Berkley Publishing Group in a 4.25" x 8" format with print so tiny it was barely readable. Page count 160. THAT edition could fit into your breast pocket and it did sell hundreds of thousands of copies. My new edition is still 160 pages, but in a 6 x 9 trade paperback format. Nice, colorful cover on good paper stock. Still slim enough to slip into a case beside a laptop, and not falling apart and difficult to read.

    So, sure, if you want a disposable book and to wear your strongest prescription reading glasses, go for the "mass market" size.
    Lynne W. Scanlon
    PS I have a kindle and I love it, even though the back panel is always falling off. My big disappointment came, however, when I wanted to pass a great read on to a friend. That's not going to happen with a Kindle! Of course, perhaps the friend went to the bookstore and bought it! That's good for the author and the publisher and the bookstore.

  8. Ultimately, the size of the book matters less than the quality of the words inside. I think we'd all do well to remember that and focus less on how we're sending those words out to the world. If the story warrants a good read, readers will find it.

    That being said, nothing helps a product more than being portable. I suppose the question is one of preference. Do you want a book that's short, squat, and fits in your pocket (though not your back pocket unless you want sciatic nerve damage) or would you prefer a thin, lanky edition that could slide into a briefcase, laptop, or messenger bag? Either way, I support the end of the hardcover. I read them from libraries, but haven't bought one in years.

    And as for the Kindle…

  9. Thanks for this post.

    Ironic, isn't it, that Allen Lane founded Penguin Books to provide pocket-sized quality books for train commuters?

    Since Penguin is run these days by accountants with little regard for literature, or their own history, you now need a dedicated backpack to carry around their 'product'.

  10. I did this when I published my first novel four years ago and it was a big success for me. People indeed responded positively to the smaller size, and many bookstores that offered to carry it said it was specifically because they loved the form factor. If financial constraints hadn't forced me to use POD/trade paperback for my later titles I'd have used the mass market size for all of them.

  11. I grew up on the pocket paperback and was sorry when it died. For the past five years I've been trying to convince an editor that now is the time to return to it. Some books won't work as pocket editions (too unwieldly) but the vast majority will.

  12. All I know is that I'd love to see a return to the pocket size paperback; nothing beats it for cheapness and portability.

  14. Wonderful article you have written here.

    Personally, I find myself satisfied with the size of all of my pocket paperbacks. They easily fit inside of my purse so I find it very easy to read on-the-go.
    Also, environmentally speaking, these books are a much better option all around.

  15. One of my easiest reading experiences ever (even while standing in a moving subway car) was with a truly portable edition of Vanity Fair published in Thomas Nelson and Sons’ New Century Library. Dimensions: 6 1/4 by 4 1/4 by a half-inch thickness. The pages are Oxford India Paper—opaque, thin, and durable. The entire book fit in the palm of my hand and was lightweight, even at 784 pages. The type size wasn’t reduced and there are still margins. This is a true pocket book.

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The Future of the Book

Follow the Money: The ebook Pricing Wars

The Future of the Book
May 28, 2009 | 4 books mentioned 3 3 min read

Last week, self-published author Bryan Gilmer struck a chord with his guest post about using discount pricing to generate ebook sales. By dropping the price of his book to $1.99, Gilmer was able to tempt many new readers to buy his book, which, in the process, catapulted it up Amazon’s rankings, generating even more visibility. Gilmer’s experiment is compelling, but it’s also just the story of one book by one self-published author who happens to be creative about marketing. Even as smaller players make headway with creative pricing, the data indicate that major publishers still hold the upper hand.Gilmer’s post also threw into sharp relief how much ebook pricing is an issue for Kindle owners. You’ve likely heard about Kindle owners who have balked at the idea of spending more than $9.99 for an ebook. With the Kindle going for $359, many Kindle owners have decided that their willingness to pony up the big bucks for the device was their side of an implicit bargain. In return, there is an expectation that ebooks will come at a discount to their physical counterparts, allowing Kindle owners to recoup their investment in the device over time. Any sign that this bargain is falling apart has been met with resistance by Kindle owners (and likely helps account for their receptiveness to experiments like Gilmer’s)Beyond the Kindle, there is the notion that ebooks should cost less because they are intrinsically worth less. There are no materials, printing, and distribution costs to worry about, and furthermore, an ebook offers less utility than a real book. As an anonymous commenter on Gilmer’s post pointed out, and I’m paraphrasing here, If I have ten books, I and nine of my friends can read all them at the same time, passing them around (and I can give them away or sell them to a second-hand bookstore when I am tired of reading them). Buying ten ebooks acquires them for me to read. No one else can read them without having my device, which deprives me of its use for the other books stored on it, and I am unable to pass the copy onto anyone else. An ebook is therefore of much lesser utility as part of a library of books than printed editions of those books are, so being expected to pay the same (or, in some cases, a higher) price for the ebook is perceived as price gouging.Publishers appear to have gotten this message as nearly all ebooks cost less than their physical editions. Meanwhile, Gilmer’s experiment offered some insight into buying habits, but by looking at The Millions’ data we can see what a wider group of readers are paying for a diverse array of titles.As I pointed out recently, Millions readers have bought a surprising number of Kindle ebooks after visiting The Millions, and while the total number isn’t large enough to provide the basis for any iron-clad assumptions, we can observe some pricing trends.For starters, the single most expensive ebook purchased by a Millions reader during the 18-month existence of the Kindle was a technical book, Dojo: Using the Dojo JavaScript Library to Build Ajax Applications, coming in at $17.49. The cheapest, meanwhile, was The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The mean price for all ebooks sold was just $7.45 and the median $9.33. By far the most common price point is $9.99. There has also clearly been some pricing experimentation going on, as many prices have changed and there have been ebooks sold for $1 that now go for $9.99.It also seemed useful to break the books down our list into some categories to see how pricing trends might be different. We looked at ebook pricing for major publishers, independent publishers, genre books, classic (public domain) books, and self-published books. The results reflect the unique economics facing each of these market segments:Major Publishers:Mean: $9.39Median: $9.99Most Expensive: $14.30 (Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean)Least Expensive: $1.75 (Revolutionary Road)Independent Publishers:Mean: $9.26Median: $9.40Most Expensive: $14.27 (My Father’s Paradise)Least Expensive: $8.76 (two titles)Genre Books:Mean: $7.51Median: $7.98Most Expensive: $9.99 (seven titles)Least Expensive: $1.00 (Use of Weapons)Self-Published:Mean: $2.56Median: $2.49Most Expensive: $4.99 (Felonious Jazz)Least Expensive: $0.80 (Chloe’s ABCs in B&W)Classics (public domain):Mean: $2.25Median: $1.29Most Expensive: $6.40 (Heart of Darkness and The Congo Diary)Least Expensive: $0.50 (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)For now, at least, it appears pricing power remains with the big players. The self-published, meanwhile, must offer big discounts to level the playing field. The question is whether the success of the latter will cause the prices demanded by the two groups to edge closer to one another over time.

The Future of the Book
| 4 books mentioned 3 3 min read
The Future of the Book

The Amazon Push

The Future of the Book
April 30, 2008 | 4 books mentioned 3

A few months ago, I wrote about some of the oddities of Amazon’s customer review system. I suggested that certain of Amazon’s “Top Reviewers” had become semi-professionalized, and that some five-star customer reviews reach readers the same way reviews in the Times (and on blogs) do: as part of a well-organized press push. A story that appeared in Galleycat last week revealed something surprising (to me anyway): the Amazon push may work in the opposite direction, to keep an unwanted review from surfacing. Apparently, Deborah MacGillivray, a romance novelist, convinced Amazon to expunge the reviews and comments of a reviewer who had been critical of her work.Again, it appears that Amazon’s customer review system is evolving beyond “helpful, tell-it-like-it-is product information” into an extension of the publishing demimonde. This is not to say that there’s anything wrong with the American review system, in which publicists send advance copies of books to influential readers in an attempt to get press; it is, rather, to argue that Amazon should take a good hard look at its system. On one hand, it could work harder to protect the disinterestedness of customer reviews (by not kowtowing to authors, for example, or by getting rid of the reviewer rankings). On the other, it might recast the review system as less of an aw-shucks, communitarian forum.

The Future of the Book
| 4 books mentioned 3
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Notable Articles Quick Hits The Future of the Book

Call Me Twitterer: Literary Twitter’s First Tweets

Notable Articles Quick Hits The Future of the Book
November 11, 2013 | 4 books mentioned 5 5 min read

Twitter had its big moment last week, but unlike so many other technology start-ups in the seeming parade of millionaire-makers over the last two decades (with the obvious exception of Amazon.com), Twitter has developed a special following in the literary community, from high-brow to low. Perhaps that’s not surprising. Writers revel in words, and Twitter, nearly alone among hot technology start-ups, is mostly about words, crafting them to meet the medium’s peculiar restraints and sending them out into the world to be engaged with or ignored. Twitter is like some atomized version of the writer’s process. With Twitter, ideas go out piecemeal, the whole process taking a millionth the amount of time it would if you were to glom all those ideas together into one big whole and turn it into something as unlikely-seeming by comparison as a book. This speed, then, may be deeply satisfying — even addictive — as writers bypass so much of the toil of getting a book out of their brains and off to readers (New York’s Kathryn Schulz elaborated smartly on this idea last week.)

There is no uniform stance on Twitter in the literary community, of course. Some, like Teju Cole and Colson Whitehead, find it vital; many others — led by a certain one-time Time coverboy from the Midwest, do not. Some writers have more prosaic feelings about Twitter. Novelist Peter Orner wrote, “Some are talented at it; others, less so.”

Zadie Smith is not on Twitter. Nor are Jeffrey Eugenides (though his vest once was), Michael Chabon (not really, though his writer wife Ayelet Waldman is), George Saunders, or David Mitchell. Jennifer Egan is, but just a little bit.

Nonetheless, Twitter appears to be here to stay, for a while anyway. And it will remain a pastime for writers looking for book news, inspiration, distraction, literary puns, and every other thing they might want. But it wasn’t always that way. In the not too distant past, the literary lights of Twitter pecked out their first 140 characters and waited to see what Twitter would bring.

Curious, I dug back into the Twitter archive to see how these writers took their first steps into Twitter. What follows are the very first tweets of some of Twitter’s well-known practitioners from the literary world.
Finishing the website entries for my fall novel The Year of the Flood.

— Margaret E. Atwood (@MargaretAtwood) July 8, 2009
 
How does a petty trader come by N30 million worth of cars? Police hope Israel Ubatuegwu, of Ajah, has a good explanation.

— Teju Cole (@tejucole) June 7, 2011
 
@R_Nash proud to be a part of ennui 2.0

— colson whitehead (@colsonwhitehead) March 15, 2009
 
Preparing for Book Expo America in the office in Dumbo. The last time we’ve to schlap boxes ourselves. Next year we pay the Teamsters…

— Richard Nash (@R_Nash) May 30, 2007
 
Last night at the Norman Mailer Award Ceremony in NYC, Oliver Stone said beautifully: “A serious writer is a rebel.”

— Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) October 5, 2012
 
trying to figure out if someone does a decent MP3 workout, which will magically transform my iphone and my body at the same time.

— Ayelet Waldman (@ayeletw) January 27, 2009
 
@JaneGreen I talked to Rufus just this morning…ok, I interviewed him for T+L

— Dani Shapiro (@danijshapiro) April 24, 2009
 
Slaughtered by Sam A. and Jefffery Y. at post-diner breakfast ping-pong. Licking wounds.

— Dwight Garner (@DwightGarner) February 13, 2009
 
Here’s a video of my speech at the NBCC in NYC last week: http://tinyurl.com/dfe8rt

— Ron Charles (@RonCharles) March 17, 2009
 
Testing…

— Sarah Weinman (@sarahw) April 24, 2007
 
reading

— Susan Orlean (@susanorlean) December 23, 2007
 
doesn’t want to be an editor. oops, too late.

— Emma Straub (@emmastraub) December 3, 2008
 
I just opened my present from Dave McKean, The Big Fat Duck Cookbook. Heavy as a stone and beautiful. “See?” he said. “I do read your blog.”

— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) December 26, 2008
 
@ShitHomemaker – this is my first tweet and it’s your fault.

— Salman Rushdie (@SalmanRushdie) September 15, 2011
 
Fine, then. I’ll twitter.

— John Green (@realjohngreen) December 11, 2008
 
No matter what I do there are always 5 emails in my inbox that I am avoiding.

— Doug Coupland (@DougCoupland) April 1, 2009
 
I’ve reached the limit on how many Facebook friends I can add. So here is a new page.

— Amy Tan (@AmyTan) August 12, 2010
 
http://www.thewriterscoffeeshop.com/publishinghouse/books/detail/23

— E L James (@E_L_James) April 12, 2011
 
First Tweet ever, prompted by Jeff Howe’s essay in Sunday’s NYTBR. Velly interesting. Helloooooo?

— Erik Larson (@exlarson) May 22, 2012
 
Does anyone know who @BretEastonEllis is?

— Bret Easton Ellis (@BretEastonEllis) April 10, 2009
 
@erlson You just got me to join Twitter.

— William Gibson (@GreatDismal) April 1, 2009
 
coveting Susan Lewis’ hair.

— Jennifer Weiner (@jenniferweiner) April 3, 2009
 
@chuckpalahniuk This is Dennis, webmaster at ChuckPalahniuk.net. Please contact me via my site email address. Thanks!

— Chuck Palahniuk (@chuckpalahniuk) January 28, 2009
 
Becoming far more wired than I probably really need to be.

— Joe Hill (@joe_hill) January 4, 2009
 
hi, i’m gary shteyngart, a furry 39-year-old immigrant man trapped in a young dachshund’s body. LOVE ME!!!!!!!!!!! pic.twitter.com/RgLBxjYO

— Gary Shteyngart (@Shteyngart) December 1, 2011
 
I’m going to do it right this time.

— Emily Gould (@EmilyGould) May 21, 2009
 
today felt like the unabomber but i wasn’t plotting anything or planning anything or trying to bomb anything and i was wearing 4-inch heels

— Kate Zambreno (@daughteroffury) June 29, 2012
 
Wessex Man http://tinyurl.com/yw93xb

— New York Times Books (@nytimesbooks) March 18, 2007
 
News: Netherland wins PEN/Faulkner award: It was overlooked for the Booker prize and the prestigious US Nat.. http://bit.ly/AufPL

— Guardian Books (@GuardianBooks) February 26, 2009
 
Podcasting: http://tinyurl.com/6hc9z4

— NY Review of Books (@nybooks) July 2, 2008
 
Check out our feature on the best audiobooks coming this spring.

— Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) January 31, 2009
 
Mario Bros. meets Macbeth: What do a pixelated plumber and a murderous king have in common? Nintendo DS — in En.. http://tinyurl.com/5gr5m4

— L.A. Times Books (@latimesbooks) December 10, 2008
 
Hello, world! Official Library of Congress Twitter feed here. So nice to see 215 followers before so much as a single tweet!

— Library of Congress (@librarycongress) January 27, 2009
 
Welcome to the new GalleyCat Twitter feed, regularly collecting tweets from Senior Editor Ron Hogan, Editor Jason Boog, and Jeff Rivera.

— GalleyCat (@GalleyCat) August 26, 2009
 
Welcome to @nprbooks! We’ll use to to share our book coverage and hopefully talk about some good books, too. / @acarvin

— NPR Books (@nprbooks) January 8, 2010
 
We noticed lots of sites use Twitter for feedback. We created this account as a placeholder, but please visit our Feedback Group anytime!

— goodreads (@goodreads) August 19, 2008
 
56 years after William Styron warned us about chasing the zeitgeist, The Paris Review is now on twitter. From issue 1: http://bit.ly/BCnnE

— The Paris Review (@parisreview) September 4, 2009
 
Culling together work for Electric Literature no.2, planning events for October, spinning splendidly through another day at the office.

— Electric Literature (@ElectricLit) August 31, 2009
 

Rick Moody on running out of luck: http://tinyurl.com/ckno8d

— The Rumpus (@The_Rumpus) January 29, 2009
 

What will be named top book of the decade? http://bit.ly/AMgq8 What’s your pick?

— The Millions (@The_Millions) September 21, 2009
 

What’s the best part of B.G.’s “Bling Bling” video? Pre-tattoo’d Wayne, zooming red VW Beetles, or the crew’s outdoor fine china picnic?

— Nick Moran (@nemoran3) February 2, 2011
 

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