Another day, another round up

Check it out at Pimp My Novel.

So many books in the world

Google counted, and there are 129,864,880 books in the world. Click through to see how they counted or, if you read one a week, you can get started on the next 2.5 million years of reading.

How to write like Vonnegut

"Don't use semicolons. They stand for absolutely nothing. They are transvestite hermaphrodites. They are just a way of showing off. To show that you have been to college."



Go here for the rest of the speech. Amazing.

Holy crap, Sue Sylvester

Sweet Cheerios,Sue Sylvester is writing a memoir. There is a god!

Kanye tweets to the New Yorker

There's a whole list of these here. Awesome!

Round up at PMN

Check it out, folks!

Aldous Huxley v. George Orwell: Death match

Holy crap, this is simultaneously the coolest and saddest thing I have ever seen. Aldous Huxley was super right.

Language geeks of the world, unite!

Oh em gee, so awesome:

I bet China Mieville would be interested in this. That's an extra perk!

Mr. Rogers Crayola factory edition

Interested in seeing inside the Moleskine factory? It's no Crayola factory with Mr. Rogers, but it ain't bad either.

Also: the making of rugs! (Yes, ok, slightly unrelated)

Libraries and spoofs, all the rage

In my round up last week at PMN I pointed out this video of the Old Spice guy shilling for libraries. Now I bring to you Stephen Jones, on the value of studying in the library:

I'm on a cart!

Actually useful information

You may think that good writing, or hard work, or good representation sells books. You would be super wrong. You know what sells books? Metadata. And, womp womp:

"There used to be consistency throughout the retail channel," Savikas said. "Amazon and B&N and other retailers all needed the same stuff." But that was before the appearance of channels like the Apple app store: "They need completely different data," Savikas said, pointing out the impact of agency model e-book pricing. "Now there may be four or five different prices for a single book."

You might write an amazing piece of work, but no one's going to find it if Amazon can't link it up right at the bottom, and if the pricing gets effed up. And most publishers don't have the resources to make sure its right everywhere. Damn internet, ruining everything.

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Round up day, friends and foes

Head on over to PMN, for all the me time you could ever want.

Things that I should not have to read before breakfast

Remember back when Phillip Pullman was making waves because schools wanted to do background checks on authors before they visited the kiddies? Once again humanity has failed us and children's author K.P. Bath has been convicted of possessing child pornography.

So, yea, maybe background checks are a good idea. Maybe also a hard drive search for everyone? And congratulations to the news, for icking me out before breakfast.

Bad romance

I swear, I'm getting back into the swing of things soon, but in the meantime: some people I think misunderstand what "romance" means. For me, and this is just an opinion, I don't include Josef Fritzl in the "romantic" category. But some might disagree!

My free time was eaten by goblins

But I still put together a round up at PMN. Go, read, conquer. Or something? Damn goblins.