Musicians and authors in the digital world.
Posted: November 29, 2011 Filed under: Rambling | Tags: beneath the paving slab the plug, books, corporate records, ebooks, futurebook, home taping is killing music, in print, meta, music, new welsh review, publishing, Rhian E Jones, the indelicates, the music industry Leave a comment »I have an essay in this month’s New Welsh Review on the impact of digitization on publishing as compared to the music industry. I wrote it without anticipating FutureBook’s overview, which does commendable spade-work explaining the situation’s background, present and future, whereas I mostly just snark from the sidelines.
In essence: big publishing houses have, like velociraptors, watched and learned from the music industry’s floundering and are now primed to do better out of e-publishing. My piece also covers the Indelicates’ ‘post-internet’ site Corporate Records, the pros and cons of self-publishing, the unpleasant prospect of e-books becoming the new disposable mass-market paperbacks while physical product becomes concentrated on luxury hardbacks, and why Hodder’s dubious flipback format is the literary equivalent of the MiniDisc.
Perhaps ironically, it’s unavailable online, but the print copy is accessible in all good stockists, or at least all Welsh ones.
Like this:
Never Mind the Bollocks.
Posted: July 18, 2011 Filed under: how i was made | Tags: books, links, music journalism, Rhian E Jones, women in music 1 Comment »Music books written by women, list of. Go, compare, question, critique.
Why don’t more women write about music – or do they? And why don’t more women write about Dylan? It can’t just be me and Sady Doyle.
Also, with due apologies for more self-promotion – I don’t think I’ve mentioned this here yet, but I’m currently writing a chapter on female postpunk musicians for a forthcoming anthology on that shy and elusive creature, the girl band. This book will be a contender with or without my contribution though. Watch this space.
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Philip Roth wins the Booker Prize: Carmen’s Complaint
Posted: June 22, 2011 Filed under: Rants | Tags: bad reputation, books, carmen callil, philip roth, publishing, Rhian E Jones 3 Comments »A now outdated post written for Bad Reputation.
Philip Roth is a good writer, but I wouldn’t want to shake hands with him.
- Jacqueline Susann’s verdict on Portnoy’s Complaint
Last week was a busy week in the book world. Sainsburys found itself anointed Bookseller of the Year to the chagrin of actual booksellers, the beleaguered Waterstones chain was saved from the asset-stripping abyss, and the Man Booker International Prize went to the veteran novelist Philip Roth. The last of these events made the biggest splash in the mainstream press, due to the consequent resignation in protest from the judging panel of Carmen Callil, the redoubtable founder of Virago Press, who – cue shock, horror, and the frantic ordering by booksellers of Roth’s backlist – disparaged Roth as a writer and disputed his worthiness to win. Read the rest of this entry »
Stop me if you think that you’ve heard this one before.
Posted: June 2, 2011 Filed under: Rants | Tags: 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, books, chris t-t, music journalism, popular culture no longer applies to me, retro, Rhian E Jones, simon reynolds, the idiots are winning Leave a comment »Simon Reynolds has decently condensed his new ‘un into a Guardian article:
The book is not a lament for a loss of quality music – it’s not like the well-springs of talent have dried up or anything – but it registers alarm about the disappearance of a certain quality in music: the “never heard this before” sensation of ecstatic disorientation caused by music that seems to come out of nowhere and point to a bright, or at least strange, future.
I don’t wish to dollop even further layers of irony on top of this particular trifle – but we’ve been here before, too, haven’t we? This is repetition, if not revival. What Reynolds castigates as ‘retromania’ has been sporadically identified throughout the past decade, most perspicaciously by several of my mates around about the point at which the third pint starts to make its presence felt, because we’re old enough to remember when revivals seemed novel, if only because this was the first we’d heard of them. Read the rest of this entry »
