Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘lit and tech’

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Why Buy the Cow: Part II

by Celeste Ng

Last week, FWR’s own Lee Thomas examined the economics of giving away e-books for free, pointing out: Free buys word of mouth, which may create the buzz needed to sustain a book long enough to find its audience. […] Many authors and publishing houses now regularly post a story from a new collection or a free first chapter as a way to entice while still protecting both profit and the value of the art. Author Jim Hanas is taking this model a step further by giving away copies of his e-book until Labor Day—directly. The One Story blog reports: In […]


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Gatsby: The Video Game

by Celeste Ng

We’ve talked about video games and their relation to narrative before. But how about fiction as video game? Enter I-Play’s video game Classic Adventures: The Great Gatsby, based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel. According to the game description, you can “Find the hidden items on your list triggering character dialogue and progressing the story,” “Recreate Fitzgerald’s famous prose, assemble your own library and earn trophies to share with friends on Facebook,” and “Complete unique mini-games: test your memory, put yourself in the author’s seat, or solve portrait puzzles.” Here’s a screenshot, complete with some landmarks from the novel: I-Play offers […]


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The Book Trailer Goes Mainstream?

by Celeste Ng

You know a phenomenon has reached critical mass when it appears in the New York Times. And recently, the New York Times discussed the growing necessity—and, more often than not, awkwardness— of the book trailer: But in the streaming video era, with the publishing industry under relentless threat, the trailer is fast becoming an essential component of online marketing. Asked to draw on often nonexistent acting skills, authors are holding forth for anything from 30 seconds to 6 minutes, frequently to the tune of stock guitar strumming, soulful violin or klezmer music. And now, those who once worried about no […]


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The Challenges of Digital Typesetting

by Celeste Ng

Abu Dhabi’s The National offers this fascinating piece by Peter Robins about typesetting ebooks: “Designing a printed book is remarkably different from designing an ebook,” says Charles Nix, a partner in the New York publishing firm Scott & Nix and the president of the Type Directors’ Club. “Printed-book design is about fixed-size pages and spreads. Those are gone in ebooks. Book designers choose typefaces and point sizes to maximize legibility and comprehension. Those are gone in ebooks too. Some formats, he notes, do allow you to embed a font, but you can’t rely on reading devices picking it up. Book […]


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Can Kickstarter fund a lit website?

by Celeste Ng

With print media slashing book sections, the future of book reviews may well be online. (Case in point: this site.) But like print media, websites cost money to run. So what’s a book review site to do? In the Stacks, a video book reviewing site, has one solution: use the community fundraising site Kickstarter to raise money. Author and site founder Michelle Zaffino writes: Last year I created the program In the Stacks video book review (www.inthestacks.tv), which features 60-second long reviews of recent books. The reviews are done by one of the most authoritative sources on the topic: Librarians. […]


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Trailer as Logical Argument

by Lee Thomas

The book trailer is a relatively new phenomenon, but innovation has quickly become the rule. Take the trailer for Gary Shteyngart’s new novel, Super Sad True Love Story, which features cameos by James Franco (a former MFA student of Shteyngart at Columbia), Jay McInerney, Edmund White, Mary Gaitskill, and Jeffrey Eugenides. It’s tongue-in-cheek, as to be expected from the author of The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, and contains some very funny non sequiturs – like how to blend in at a Paris Review party – and I knew virtually nothing about the book by the end. But conveying actual information is […]


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All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my slushpile.

by Celeste Ng

With self-publishing on the rise, anyone can be an author. No more slush pile! No more snooty agents and editors as gatekeepers! The public will decide which books succeed through the glories of democracy! But what happens to the readers in this scenario? That’s what Laura Miller asks on Salon.com. As she puts it, is the public prepared to meet the slush pile? You’ve either experienced slush or you haven’t, and the difference is not trivial. People who have never had the job of reading through the heaps of unsolicited manuscripts sent to anyone even remotely connected with publishing typically […]


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Typewriter, meet computer.

by Celeste Ng

At last, a middle ground between those who love their computers and those who prefer typewriters. Sort of. Artist Jack Zyklin has found a way to connect a typewriter to a computer: The USBTypewriter is a new and groundbreaking innovation in the field of obsolescence. Lovers of the look, feel, and quality of old fashioned manual typewriters can now use them as keyboards for any USB-capable computer, such as a PC, Mac, or even iPad! For the curious, Zyklin’s website offers a demo video and a schematic of how it works. And for those wanting to take the plunge, you […]


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Twitter-ary Analysis

by Celeste Ng

Still not convinced that “Twitterature” is an actual art form? TIME magazine’s James Poniewozik has put together the most compelling analysis of Twitterfiction I’ve seen yet: Like any other kind of literature, Twitter lit — or Twitterature, to borrow the title of a recent book that condensed literary classics into tweet form — has its strengths, rules and tropes. Twitter is pure voice, an exercise in implying character through detail and tone. Halpern’s inaugural @shitmydadsays tweet is so economical that it should be taught in writing workshops: “‘I didn’t live to be 73 years old so I could eat kale. […]




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