Books are bad now, too?

Again, what?

I mean, books suck. Most books are dopier than television or movies or even advertising (many books tend to be just collateral promotions or the lesser offspring of dopey television, movies, and advertising). Even if there are precious exceptions, the overwhelming number of big-money, industry-sustaining books are incontrovertibly dum-dum things. More cynical, more pandering than any other entertainment product. Calling them books may be a substantial part of the problem with the book business—it provides undeserved and unfair dignity (perhaps there should be a way to certify something as an actual book). Working at a magazine where every day random books come flying in by the bushel (along with the calls from sluggish book publicists), you get a sense of the magnitude of the wasteland. Books may be the true lowest-common-denominator medium.

Seriously, this Michael Wolff guy bothers me. It's like a book killed his father or something and he's out for revenge. 

It's one thing to criticize certain political moves in the book industry. Has it been artifically ballooned by big box chain stores such as Barnes & Noble? Yeah, probably. Are the best sellers the best books? Likely not. Are the books getting the most marketing dollars the ones that deserve the most marketing? Again, I would doubt it. But that's the business we're in. Absolutely none of that means that there aren't a thousand incredible novels in every store, and there aren't a thousand more great ones coming out every year. Maybe if there were only a couple hundred books a year, guys like Michael Wolff wouldn't decry that all books are terrible. But there are on average 300,000 a year, which means book readers have to do a little bit of work to find what they like. But much like the music industry, choice is always a good thing, and having the feeding trough taken away means that some people will say there isn't anything good to chew on anymore. 

Don't listen to this guy. He's an old idiot, clamouring for the days when fewer choices meant easier decisions. 

Books are evil now?

What?

Books are a sales tool. They’re propaganda.

And they’re fake. A lie. So many are just simply not written by the people the publisher tells you they are written by. Somebody should sue.

First off, I love that Michael Wolff is talking about ghostwritten or co-written memoirs being the worst thing ever while a floating Sarah Palin ad encroaches on the article to the right. Secondly, dude is crazy.

This really isn’t quibbling. We have created a giant system of national agitprop, in which books and the book business have become one of the most effective tools. Literate people should boycott books. 

Let me repeat that. He says that literate people should boycott books. Well, who would buy books? The illiterate? That's just silly. 

Ghostwriting and co-writing has been a mainstay in celebrity publishing forever. Here's the business plan: Sarah Palin wants to put out a book. A publisher knows this book will sell a ton of copies. But Sarah Palin is not a great writer, so the publisher brings in someone (Lynn Vincent) to write it for her, because she is a qualified writer (at least, according to the publisher). This sort of thing happens all the time, and has been happening for many, many years. This isn't a bad thing. This isn't a good thing. It's just a thing. Celebrity memoirs are generally ghostwritten, because celebrities are generally bad authors. People get this. People accept this. People do not buy celebrity memoirs for the prose. 

I'm pretty sure Linden MacIntyre is still writing his own books. I'm pretty sure Jeremy Lethem is still writing his own books. James Patterson isn't writing all of his books, but that's another story. Let me know when the real authors of this world start hiring scabs. Then we can have the conversation about publishers being evil. Until then, give it a rest. 

Apparently the next great book trend is crazy conservatives

Following the staggering success of Sarah Palin's ghostwritten memoir, publishers are snapping up conservative hardcovers like they're the new vampires.

From MediaBistro:

Following blockbuster books by Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, publishers are chasing conservative scribes. Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg has scored a reported one million dollar deal for his next book.

Goldberg riled the blogosphere with his first book, "Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning." The new book has a temporary title: "The Tyranny of Clichés."

Can't wait for the conservative viewpoints of Dracula to tie this all together. 

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