Hello, Maxine!

Although I've never sent anyone an email asking for a link, I get them every single day. It gets to be exhausting, which is the main reason why I don't maintain a blogroll.

This practice is no secret here in the States, but, oh my, those prices!

Agreeing with previous comments, I like standalone blogs the way they are now. Social networks, messaging, and twittering overload my brain circuits. I need down time.

There are hundreds of memes rolling through the blogs on any given day. It's so silly how this one turned out to be so controversial. Sour grapes, I say.

I'm not sure I even know how to use MT3 properly, and now I will soon be doing battle with 50 new features? I can't keep up.

Although I can't speak for all publishers, the two houses I worked for had both trade and educational divisions (which is how I know a bit about both markets). Pricing was pretty much standard based on production costs, contract royalties, and format. Sales projections were more tied to initial print run, but, of course, print run also factors into production costs. Publishing is an extremely complex industry even though it might seem like printing a book is a fairly easy thing to do. In addition, it moves very, very slowly. If you think about it, the book itself hasn't changed much since it was invented by the ancient Romans. The last revolution in publishing happened when Gutenberg invented the printing press. Before the Internet, publishers spent roughly 600 years of doing business the same way so it should be no surprise that they're slow to catch on.

Sorry Mr. Charkin, but I don't buy the pricing point argument. Academic books are expensive because they generally cost more to produce (due to things like obtaining reproductive rights to charts and illustrations), require more research and effort on the part of the author, and often have a short selling span before requiring an update to a new edition. Calling them "permanent" and "valuable" is what's known as positioning. In the educational market, what often happens is that the publisher might realize that a particular work has appeal beyond academia. To get more out of the long tail, they'll reposition a book for the "trade" market. This often is done with a title change and reprinting in another format (trade paperback size, less glossy/cheaper paper, snazzy cover graphic). This may occur at the end of the academic version's lifespan. Sometimes, both the more expensive academic version and cheaper trade version are in print simultaneously. Yet, the two markets rarely meet because publishers control where books are sold and to what kind of customer. Based on the above, I wouldn't be surprised if The Literary Tourist eventually becomes a candidate for repositioning. I'm not saying there's anything necessarily wrong with the above since publishers need to make money and pricing is driven by what a consumer is willing to spend based on perceived value. But with the Internet putting so much information at our fingertips, a savvy academic can frequently find better value for their buck in the trade market.

Susan, thank you so much for putting it exactly the right way. I completely see why she's so disliked now. It's a shame how assertiveness is respected in a man but looked down on in a woman. Maxine, I also have to admit to finding Bill hunky. He is a heck of a smooth talker. And playfully smart. I'm about halfway through the crossword puzzle he wrote for The New York Times Magazine, and I'm stuck because I don't know enough about oldies music or Baby Boomers.

I'm not sure why so many hate her so much. On a political news show last night, I saw a criticism of her as thinking she is above the law. Huh? Does this go back to a shady land deal from years ago that no one was able to prove against her and her husband? Considering what's been going on at the top of the other party (Libby, Wolfowitz, Gonzales), it's like a dark as pitch pot calling a semi-rusty kettle black. I haven't made up my mind yet since the campaign season has just started, but I am looking forward to when the field gets narrowed after the two primaries. 2008 will be an interesting election year for us. For you, though, 2007 has turned out to be an interesting non-election year, hasn't it? I can't help but feel a bit of guilt that our international embarrassment of a leader has had something to do with it.

I'm not so sure how actually unloved Hillary is because here the minority tends to shout loudest. Although I'm not a huge fan of her politics, I have to admit that she appears to be the most intelligent and savvy of all the candidates (among both parties). Plus, her husband is a huge asset. Despite the incident with the intern, he is beloved by his party.

Hi, Debra. Although I totally understand if you're still sore at me, I have tagged you for the "8 Things" meme: http://bookblog.net/bbarchives/2007/05/8_things_meme.php

Tag...You're it: http://bookblog.net/bbarchives/2007/05/8_things_meme.php

When I first read the three examples, I thought they all were about the Bible. I'm glad I was right at least once.

This is one of the best posts I've read about the Genie. Most people are content to stuff some writing into it and declare it wrong because, "I'm a man and it said my writing is female," or "I'm a woman and it said my writing is male." Although the two computational linguists (who worked with me on the scoring algorithm for the website) claim to be able to predict a writer's gender from text, I have always believed that they had it backwards. Rather than working up from text to gender, using text to determine writing trends by gender is a much more useful study. Thank you for actually getting it.

My school was in an inner city neighborhood and each classroom was outfitted with an ancient pair of Macs. I never used them for teaching because I continually ran into problems with the netnanny software. Someone, somewhere blocked a whole range of "naughty" words so nearly every web site was a blank page. The Powers That Be also blocked certain search phrases, including "sports." Sports! The irony was that I constantly heard talk of getting teachers to integrate technology into the classroom. Netnanny rendered the Internet useless. In my last year, I had 33 students and 2 nearly unusable computers. The school's computer lab only had 30 computers in it and, often, several of them were broken. And I always found it funny that technology talk usually came up when I'd be sitting in a room with ancient teachers, many having begun their careers before touch tone telephones were the standard.

When I taught, I was a model teacher, which meant I was sent to lots of workshops for training to eventually pass on to other teachers at my school. The subject of kids being "smarter" today always came up because of the need to figure out new ways to teach them. Technology, media, and the Internet were generally cited as reasons behind the new "smartness." Personally, I never thought the kids were any "smarter" than we were because I always found it easy to run intellectual circles around them. (One favorite teaching method of mine was creating confusion by using the Socratic method, forcing students to form logical order out of chaos.) Rather, I believe today's kids are "savvier." They are more aware of the wide world than I was as a child, and I am sure the Internet has a lot to do with it.

I've actually been to DePauw because I went to university in the US Midwest. It's a liberal arts school founded by Methodists. In my experience, quite a few SF types do think it's much more than entertainment. Considering its influence on technological innovations and geekery, you can't really fault them for it.

The most interesting sound byte I heard yesterday was from Tucker on MSNBC. He brought up the reporters who have descended on Blacksburg and said he understood why the media gets criticized for how they swarm. His self-aware comment took me by surprise because I hadn't been expecting to hear anything like it so soon.

Starbucks here in the US has hit on something with putting books in their shops. In my experience, it's usually a long wait for anything other than an already-brewed coffee, so browsing through a selection of books is a natural thing to do while standing in line.

It looks as though the second parenthesis interfered with the link. Here it is again: http://www.usatoday.com/life/top25-books.htm

It should be quite a list, and I'm looking forward to finding out what's on it. Have you seen USA Today's list of most memorable books of the last 25 years? (http://www.usatoday.com/life/top25-books.htm) Although I wouldn't call the majority of the titles "quality" reading, it's one of the few book lists I've ever come across on which I've heard of every title.

Great interview, Maxine!