Month: August 2007

Is This For Real?

I guess it says something either about me or about the Brownback campaign, but I remain unsure if this site is a parody or not. Here’s a new blog-post from BaptistsforBrownback2008:

"It is written in Rev 20:8-Satan shall go out to deceive all the nations which are in the four quarters of the Earth, Gog,and Magog to gather them together to battle: The number of whom is countless and of the sand of the sea or shores of the sea.  As descendant of Canaan, Liberal Democrat, Barack Obama Hussein is indeed a liar for that there is no disputing. He has and will continue to with his lies to God’s children that abortion, blatant homosexuality, fornication, and socialism is fun and good. This does not however make him the great liar that God tells us is to be the Anti-Christ. It is Barack Hussein Obama’s curse of coloredness that will prevent him from ever being elected leader of a true Christian nation, one that is founded upon Christian principle by the chosen, fair-skinned people of God."

You tell me. I’m leaning toward parody. But it’s a lot of work if it is.

Why The Publishing Industry Is So Bad

A reader writes:

Re: your complaints about the publishing industry. I’ve worked in publishing for more than 25 years. I’ve done a little bit of everything, from copyediting, to acquisitions work, to typesetting, to book design, to software development. (OK, so it’s not your normal career path.)

In my last job, the production editors were instructed never to let me see a new book – I had a nasty habit of finding an error within the first few seconds of handling a copy.

But the problem is that good copy-editing is expensive — at least, as modern accounting rules in publishing count expense. Everyone knows that publishing books is not like manufacturing widgets, but it’s the widget model that prevails among the bean counters.

And then there’s the current American education system. How many people notice flaws in other people’s prose (much less their own)? I do, and I’d hazard a guess that most readers of your blog can (and maybe even some of the writers!), but we make a small minority of the reading public. So, why should a rational businessman worry about such a minor issue as prose quality when hardly anyone cares?

Finally, I must say that many of those who do care work in the lower echelons of the publishing business, and publishers like Talese rely upon — or take advantage of — their devotion to the printed word. But their number is diminishing, and current college graduates lack both the skills and the will to carry on the tradition, especially at the salaries being offered.

Soon, print-on-demand may put the publishing houses out of business. It can’t happen soon enough. The first print-run of my last book was published with an indeterminate number of copies with the pages in the wrong order. I was the only person who noticed. No one at Harper Collins or the printer was able to tell me how many books had been misprinted, or shipped with misprints. They had no idea; and no way to find out.

Quote for the Day

"Huckabee is an evangelical. He has not learned how to speak to evangelicals; i.e. Bush 41 & 43. He is one of us. I know Senator Brownback converted to Roman Catholicism in 2002. Frankly, as a recovering Catholic myself, that is all I need to know about his discernment when compared to the Governor’s. I don’t if this fact is widely known among evangelicals who are supporting Brownback," – Rev. Tim Rude, a pastor at the Walnut Creek Community Church in Windsor Heights, Iowa, in an email to Iowa evangelicals.