"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast"
-Oscar Wilde		 Brilliant at Breakfast title banner "The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself."
-- Proverbs 11:25
"...you have a choice: be a fighting liberal or sit quietly. I know what I am, what are you?" -- Steve Gilliard, 1964 - 2007

"For straight up monster-stomping goodness, nothing makes smoke shoot out my ears like Brilliant@Breakfast" -- Tata

"...the best bleacher bum since Pete Axthelm" -- Randy K.

"I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum." -- "Rowdy" Roddy Piper (1954-2015), They Live
Thursday, December 29, 2011

Robert Ballard wept.
Posted by Jill | 6:05 PM
I'm sorry, but this is just so wrong:
The owner of the largest trove of artifacts salvaged from the Titanic is putting the vast collection up for auction as a single lot in 2012, the 100th anniversary of the world's most famous shipwreck.

More than 5,500 items including fine china, ship fittings and portions of hull that were recovered from the ocean liner have an estimated value of $189 million, according to Premier Exhibitions Inc., parent of RMS Titanic Inc., the Titanic's court-approved salvor. That value was based on a 2007 appraisal and doesn't include intellectual property gathered from a 2010 scientific expedition that mapped the wreck site.

The auction is scheduled for April 1 by Guernsey's, a New York City auction house, according to filings by Premier Exhibitions with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Results of the auction won't be announced until April 15, the date a century ago the Titanic sank on its maiden voyage after striking an iceberg.

In 90 years, will the 9/11 memorial also be sold off piecemeal?

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Wednesday, March 02, 2011

Perhaps traditional book publishing shouldn't be regarded as the holy grail for writers anymore
Posted by Jill | 6:12 AM
Regular readers of this blog are well aware of our good friend jurassicpork's travels through the publishing industry, and of finding doors slammed in his face.

Most of those of us who write have the dream of someday holding the first bound copy of our first book in our hands. When we hear of others achieving that goal, it's hard not to feel at least a twinge of envy. My supervisor at my last job achieved a publishing deal for his memoir about his garden -- a real, honest-to-goodness book deal, with an agent and a contract and a tour and frontage at Barnes and Noble and a review in the Sunday New York Times book review section. His publisher also picked up the option on his second book as well. If you think I didn't do at least a little bit of teeth-gnashing about it, you're attributing a level of sainthood to me that I lack, for all that my Unfinished Novel In Which I Throw Everything But the Kitchen Sink at my protagonist will probably always be unfinished. The closest thing I'll ever get to a published book is when I compile what used to have a working title of The Drapes are Winning: The Best of Brilliant at Breakfast until I found that Oscar Wilde never said that. And so it goes.

There are those who have done reasonably well with self-publishing. My sister's book, Visioncrafting: A Self-Guided Journey, can be purchased on Amazon.com, just as Donald Rumsfeld's can. We mere mortals can probably sell as many books self-promoting as we're likely to get being buried in the racks at Barnes and Noble. And with Borders going out of business, the idea of Seeing Your Book In The Store doesn't have the same thrill it used to, since Barnes and Noble is going to give most of its prime space to celebrity authors.

The other nasty aspect of book publishing these days, and about one's odds of appearing on the New York Times Bestseller list, is bulk sales. Conservative book clubs often buy tens of thousands of copies of books by right-wing authors. Mitt Romney has exchanged bulk sales for speeches. Right-wing groups bought George W. Bush's memoir in bulk. This makes it next to impossible for nonfiction authors who aren't celebrities to ever make it onto that list. For fiction writers it's worse. For every Jodi Picoult, who cranked out a book every nine months for years before becoming a reliable bestseller, or Fup, a book picked off the slush pile with much fanfare by Morgan Entrekin in 1983 (and which subsequently bombed), there are tens of thousands of people who will never, ever get that first break.

But perhaps it's time to stop revering the publishing industry as the ultimate seal of approval. Celebrity book publishing has always been the cash cow of the industry. When I worked at Simon & Schuster in the 1980's, books like the Jane Fonda Workout Book and Arnold Schwarzenegger's Pumping Iron and the novels of Judith Krantz paid the bills so that Erwin Glikes could publish his neocons.

But now all you need do is be a marginal celebrity and you can be a published author, because name recognition is everything. This is how people like Kim Kardashian and Snooki and that woman who's on one of the Real Housewives show get book contracts.

Or for that matter, the barely 20-year-old Bristol Palin:
The daughter of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin has signed with William Morrow to publish "Not Afraid of Life," to come out this summer. Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins, announced Tuesday that the memoir would provide "an inside look at her life."

"Bristol gives readers an intimate behind-the-scenes look at her life for the first time, from growing up in Alaska to coming of age amid the media and political frenzy surrounding her mother's political rise; from becoming a single mother while still a teenager to coping as her relationship with her baby's father crumbled publicly — not once, but twice," according to Morrow.

A listing for the book briefly appeared last month on Amazon.com and on an online HarperCollins spreadsheet. HarperCollins has published two best-sellers by Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential candidate in 2008: "Going Rogue" and "America by Heart."

Bristol Palin, 20, has become a celebrity in her own right, through her broken relationship with her child's father, Levi Johnston, and through her time as a contestant on "Dancing With the Stars."

"Bristol talks about the highs and lows of her appearance on ABC-TV's 'Dancing With the Stars,' including the aching hours of practice, the biting criticisms, and the thrill of getting to the show's finals," Morrow announced. "She speaks candidly of her aspirations for the future and the deep religious faith that gives her strength and inspiration.

"Plainspoken and disarmingly down to earth, Bristol offers new insight and understanding of who she is and what she values most."

It's a fait accompli that this tome will end up on the New York Times bestseller list, because conservative groups will make sure it does.

So if this is the company that book publishers are keeping, perhaps it's time for aspiring authors to stop casting pearls before swine?

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Thursday, October 30, 2008

The heck with "Joe the Plumber." Meet "Joe the Entrepreneur"
Posted by Jill | 6:34 AM
Proving once again that George Carlin was right: If you nail together two things that were never nailed together before, some schmuck will buy it from you:
Thinking of ways to profit from disaster is keeping America great! The latest ingenious product hitting the market this week is the Wall Street Coffin.

For $35, you can order a wood coffin filled with actual shredded money and a plaque of your choice, including "R.I.P. Lehman Bros., 1885-2008", and "R.I.P. Bear Stearns, 1923-2008." For an extra $5, you can customize the plaque. Maybe "R.I.P. Jane's 401k", or "R.I.P. Jane's GE Stock Options with a $28 Strike Price."

The coffins are made by Jist Enterprises in Westfield, New Jersey. The owner, who describes himself as "a regular working stiff" says on the web site: "As a citizen of the United States, I’m disgusted! I’m disgusted that our financial institutions have failed us so dramatically and that our government has allowed this crisis to evolve...What can I do? I can sell this little Wall Street Coffin and donate 15% of the proceeds to some good charities that help people through difficult times."


And that, folks, is the difference between Republican kool-aid drinkers and human beings. I'm quite certain that the makers of Hillary nutcrackers and Obama monkey dolls aren't donating a damn nickel to charity.

(h/t)

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