Comments on: Very quick

By: Justine

Justine — Mon, 01 May 2006 02:35:27 +0000

Thanks for that, Ray. It’s amazing how tricky a business publishing has always been. If only she’d live a hundred years or more longer . . . She’d've been rich!

And of course there have always been regular pronouncements of the end of publishing as we know it. Everyone forgets that there are way more readers now than there were a century ago.

By: Ray Davis

Ray Davis — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 14:04:29 +0000

The introduction to the new Cambridge U. Mansfield Park tells a particularly sad story of P&L. Jane Austen published the first edition on commission. (Not a term you hear much any more -- basically, it was self-publishing without the initial cash outlay. The publisher deducted costs and a commission from sales, and eventually presented you with profits or a bill.) It sold out and she made over Â£300, but the paper was cheap and the printing was shabby. When she switched to a less pulpy publisher, he offered her Â£450 for Emma, but only if the copyrights for MP and Sense & Sensibility were part of the deal. She'd sold the copyright to Pride & Prejudice for Â£110 and didn't want to make that mistake again. Instead she stuck with the commission route. Since books were expensive and novels were considered disposable trash, novel sales at the time were limited to libraries. Jane Austen and her second publisher seem to have shared the hope that if a novel was well-written enough, people would want to own it to re-read like poetry, instead of disposing of it as quickly as possible. "An experience your family will treasure again and again!" Alongside Emma, they decided to risk a second edition of Mansfield Park, gambling on the end-reader market, this time with good paper stock and better printers. The gamble flopped. Out of a second edition of 750 copies, 500 were remaindered. And since the old book's loss was set against profits from the new book, all Austen made by Emma was Â£38.

By: Little Willow

Little Willow — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 07:59:06 +0000

YAY. I am now a goddess. Do I get any special powers? (Telekinesis or telepathy, please.) Wings? (I love fairy wings. I have no desire to fly. Weird, isn’t it?) A magical, English-speaking critter? (Falkor the Luck Dragon and/or Gryphon, please.)

You appear to bring out the parentheses in me.

By: Justine

Justine — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 07:38:49 +0000

If I say your goddess, Miss Little Willow, then you are a goddess! Anyone who prods me to read A Certain Slant of Light is a goddess!

By: Little Willow

Little Willow — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 07:37:32 +0000

I’m not a goddess, but I am a miraculous girl. According to Christopher Golden, that is.

By: Justine

Justine — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 07:25:39 +0000

I know her type. She’s like all those folks what watch the cricket show on fox despite not being able to tell a stump from a box, just to clap eyes on Brendan Julian and listen to his dulcets. A pox on ‘em, I say, a pox!

By: Ben Payne

Ben Payne — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 07:01:45 +0000

My girlfriend hates cricket but loves to watch Jason Gillespie bat (not bowl) and yell “gooooo Mullet!”…. she was very excited, needless to say, even though the mullet is gone…

By: heather w

heather w — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 05:12:45 +0000

I haven’t actually been to Powells this week, but their website says there are 2 copies of Daughters (pb) at the main store and more in the warehouse:

http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=1-0819566764-0

By: Dana

Dana — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 04:34:03 +0000

it didnt make sense to me. too manyu numbers!