What's the matter with you people? Don't you know a joke when you hear one?
"Suddenly, books by bloggers will be a trend, a cultural phenomenon. You will probably read about it in the Sunday Times. And when that happens the person to thank—or blame—will be Kate Lee, who is currently a twenty-seven-year-old assistant at International Creative Management." —The New Yorker, May 31, 2004
"[A]s these blogs gained a wider audience some publishers started paying attention to them. Sometimes publishers are interested in publishing elements of the blogs in book form; mostly they simply enjoy the blogger's writing and want to publish a novel or nonfiction book by the blogger, usually on a topic unrelated to the blog... Kate Lee, an assistant at International Creative Management talent agency in New York, has become a kind of one-woman blog boutique, surfing for the best writers online and suggesting they work with her to develop and sell a book. — The (Wednesday) Times, November 15, 2004
Comments
Not quite the post
Gawker was looking for, but it's close.
And how do I get all these desparate agents and publishers to read my writings?
Posted by: Jesse | December 15, 2004 11:08 PM
How come Radosh doesn't have a book deal?
Posted by: Shemp | December 15, 2004 11:18 PM
Isn't the New Yorker piece a trend piece, too? It just tries to evade the trend label by being ironic about trends. (You don't escape the trend cliche simply by writing: "Gee, I've identified something that one day the stodgy NYTimes will call a trend.")
Posted by: CTS | December 16, 2004 8:33 AM
Well, I have nothing against trend stories per se. I have written a few, and enjoyed many others (as I say in my GQ piece). I just find that it's too easy to write bogus ones. But what Gawker, most bloggers, the New York Press, and others don't seem to get -- possibly because they get misled and worked up by the first paragraph, which I admit is probably my fault -- is that "A Book In You" is NOT an article about bloggers writing books -- a phenomenon that was not new when I wrote the piece and that is not particularly revealing or interesting (as people are fond of pointing out). It's about the fact that one young agent is building her career on becoming the agent to the bloggers, and then, the punchline, that even she realizes this might not be the best star to hitch her wagon on. Bloggers want this story to be about THEM, rather than about Kate Lee, because bloggers want every story to be about them (speaking from experience).
Anyway, it's one thing for Jess to not give me a link when she's dissing me, but would it kill her to check the site? I made sure to check Gawker before I posted this, and a the time, she had not yet begun her countdown.
Posted by: radosh | December 16, 2004 10:31 AM
Models who act, receptionists with light typing, now bloggers who write.
Posted by: AnotherDaniel | December 16, 2004 10:32 AM
I'm looking forward to the Bloggers discover the cruelty of remaindering trend pieces.
Posted by: JJ | January 3, 2005 5:09 PM