{"id":977,"date":"2006-06-02T11:04:15","date_gmt":"2006-06-02T16:04:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/scan-and-pan\/"},"modified":"2006-06-02T11:04:15","modified_gmt":"2006-06-02T16:04:15","slug":"scan-and-pan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/scan-and-pan","title":{"rendered":"Scan and Pan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continuing that series of posts and links about contemporary fiction, here’s a piece in Slate<\/em> about how book sales are measured and ignored<\/a>:<\/p>\n

[Using Bookscan to garner sales numbers] has become popular for a few reasons having to do with the culture of journalism and publishing. In general, the publishing world treats money the way old-line WASPs once did\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u009das a subject that genteel people simply don’t discuss. The only question considered to be more indelicate than how much one was paid to write a book is how many copies it has sold.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Enjoy.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continuing that series of posts and links about contemporary fiction, here’s a piece in Slate about how book sales are measured and ignored: [Using Bookscan to garner sales numbers] has become popular for a few reasons having to do with the culture of journalism and publishing. In general, the publishing world treats money the way … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Scan and Pan”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-fL","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1105,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/whats-an-interweb","url_meta":{"origin":977,"position":0},"title":"What’s an interweb?","author":"Gil","date":"September 7, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Big off-site sales meeting today, to discuss online sales strategies for the company. I'm not in sales, but they brought me in (along with our VP\/editorial director) to give some perspective on how the editors can contribute good web-based content. It was a critical meeting, in which we hammered out\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2293,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/catch-a-fire","url_meta":{"origin":977,"position":1},"title":"Catch a fire","author":"Gil","date":"August 21, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I don't agree with all of this guy's points about the future of digital books vis a vis the success of the Kindle. I'm optimistic that the presence of the Kindle and other e-readers will help drag book publishing out of the horrifically dysfunctional returnable bookstore model that it's currently\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B001CBMX7Y","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5504,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/ad-it-up","url_meta":{"origin":977,"position":2},"title":"Ad It Up","author":"Gil","date":"August 5, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I enjoyed this article about Cond\u00e9 Nast's new digital publishing guru\/savant, Scott Dadich. (Well, I was filled with resentment and curmudgeonism at first, especially when I read that he's only 34 years old, but I got over that quickly and decided to read the piece on its own merits, rather\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/subscription-rates.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3719,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/the-0-fer-intersection","url_meta":{"origin":977,"position":3},"title":"The 0-fer Intersection","author":"Gil","date":"April 1, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Many years ago, when I was a micropress publisher, the first book I put out had an introduction written by Samuel R. Delany. This was a coup, because Delany had built a significant fan-following over his years in publishing, first in science fiction and then in the high-brow world of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "0-fer"","block_context":{"text":"0-fer","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/0-fer"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0966599802","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/happy-valentines-day","url_meta":{"origin":977,"position":4},"title":"Happy Valentine’s Day","author":"Gil","date":"February 15, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"It was a happier Valentine's Day than I was expecting. As if in response to my Pattern Recognition complaints, something astonishing happened yesterday. I received what may be the first legit post-9.11 novel. Background: in addition to editing a pharmaceutical trade magazine by day, I run Voyant Publishing, a small\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3018,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/publishing-still-doomed","url_meta":{"origin":977,"position":5},"title":"Publishing: Still Doomed","author":"Gil","date":"December 4, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm still a bit under the weather, so I won't offer much commentary on these posts about book publishing. There was a big shakeout yesterday at Random House and layoffs at Simon & Schuster. Along with last month's announcement that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt was \"freezing\" acqusitions -- leading to the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}