Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘lit and tech’

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Tao Lin: Literary guerilla marketer for the Internet era?

by Celeste Ng

Salon.com’s Daniel B. Roberts profiles Tao Lin, an emerging writer with an eye for unusual self-marketing opportunities. Lin has sold “shares” of his novel Richard Yates—$2000 for 10% of the domestic profits. He’s also auctioned off a package of goodies—including a T-shirt, an unpublished draft of a short story, and a “unique drawing of a Sasquatch holding a hamburger”—on his blog. And he engages with his readers directly using the internet and social networking, even posting his phone number online. Judging by his blog’s URL—http://heheheheheheheeheheheehehe.com/—Lin has a sense of humor about his work and his own marketing. But Roberts doesn’t […]


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eBook Readers Read More, Socialize More?

by Celeste Ng

Okay, they’re lighter. They’re cheaper. Some have argued that they’re greener, too. Now the Wall Street Journal reports that ebook readers read more books: A study of 1,200 e-reader owners by Marketing and Research Resources Inc. found that 40% said they now read more than they did with print books. Of those surveyed, 58% said they read about the same as before while 2% said they read less than before. And 55% of the respondents in the May study, paid for by e-reader maker Sony Corp., thought they’d use the device to read even more books in the future. […] […]


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Free Books for A Small Price: The Future of E-Reading?

by Michael Rudin

While Apple and Amazon wage price wars over hardware and e-books, the new Spanish-based firm 24Symbols aims to use their gadgets’ own Wi-Fi connections against them. Using the Kindle and iPad’s internet browsers, 24Symbols promises totally free e-books. Readers will be served advertisements in return for free access to a wide-ranging catalogue, from comic books to novels. Springwise.com recently highlighted the new firm by linking it to popular free ad-based serving platforms in the music world: Just as ad-supported sites like Pandora and Spotify let music lovers listen to and share their favourite music for free, so Spanish 24symbols is […]


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Choose Your Own E-venture

by Celeste Ng

If you decide to follow the tunnel, turn to page 151. If you decide to cross the bridge, turn to page 12. Remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books? Now you can enjoy the series in ebook format with the new iPhone app U-Ventures. The app was created by Edward Packard, one of the authors of the original Choose Your Own Adventure series and creator of U-Ventures. In an interview with NPR host Neal Conan, Packard comments on some of the narrative changes made possible by the new digital format. First there are the obvious bells and whistles that ebooks […]


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Sharpie's new liquid pencil

by Celeste Ng

So say you’ve decided to unplug for a while. That doesn’t mean you have to go completely low-tech. The new liquid pencil from Sharpie, for example, seems like an ingenious new invention. Wait, you may be saying. A pencil from Sharpie? Aren’t those polar opposites? As it turns out, no. The pencil’s “ink,” made from liquid graphite, can be erased like an ordinary pencil—for three days. After that, the ink becomes permanent. I’ve always liked writing in pencil, and to me, this sounds like it might offer all the benefits (erasability, flexibility of expression) without the downsides (smudging and ineveitable […]


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Crazyhorse Literary Journal launches ebook format

by Celeste Ng

Lit journal Crazyhorse now offers its readers two options: print and ebook. But unlike many ebooks, in which font and typesetting may be very different on-screen and on paper, the editors describe the ebook version as “a digital book version of the same Crazyhorse paper-and-print page.” Indeed, the pages are nicely laid out and there’s even a turning-page animation for that printed-page feel. You can see a sample from the current ebook issue here. What’s more, ebook-only subscriptions are half the price of print subcriptions ($8 for one year of ebooks; $16 for one year of print, with free ebook […]


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Map Your Reading

by Celeste Ng

Google Lit Trips uses Google Earth to show readers important locations in works of literature. For example, if you’re reading The Grapes of Wrath, you can follow the Joads’ travel along Route 66, or while reading Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, you can track the kid from Texas to Mexico and beyond. The site’s main focus is on children’s and YA lit, with maps for classics such as Make Way for Ducklings, The Slave Dancer, and Paddle-to-the-Sea. But there are a growing number of “trips” for adult literary fiction as well, including The Road by Cormac McCarthy, A Portrait of […]


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The World's First (Really) Commercial Novel

by Celeste Ng

Ever wonder what would happen if the plotline of a novel were up for sale? Commercial Novel aims to find out. By commenting on the site—and making a donation to the site via PayPal—you can influence what happens in the next chapter of the novel. The comment with the highest donation shapes the next segment of the book. It’s sort of a three-way cross between an improv show, an exquisite corpse, and a charity auction. The site’s authors explain the motivation behind the project: We are fictional writers who lost our fictional middle-class lifestyle with the onset of the recession.* […]


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If you were reading this on paper, you'd be finished by now.

by Celeste Ng

Perhaps our recent posts on e-books have you jonesing for an iPad or a Kindle. Or maybe they’ve made you nostalgic for a good old print hardback. Either way, here’s something else to consider: reading on paper is faster than reading on a screen. The Nielsen Norman group (no, that Nielsen) found that reading in electronic format was up to 10.7% slower than reading a paper book. Reports Macworld: Nielsen’s findings were based on the performance of 24 users who “like reading and frequently read books.” The subjects each read different short stories by Ernest Hemingway on all four platforms, […]




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