Andrew Losowsky2013-06-18T02:20:10-04:00Andrew Losowskyhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=andrew-losowskyCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Andrew LosowskyGood old fashioned elbow grease.9 Books That People Will Judge You For Reading (And Why They're Wrong)tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.33861072013-06-05T07:37:16-04:002013-06-05T07:37:34-04:00Andrew Losowskyhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-losowsky/
A book can say so much about a person -- and it can also say nothing at all. It's simply what they are reading right now.
It's bad enough when people assume things about an author's life based on their books, but a reader? You know nothing about that person, their life, why they are reading the book or what they think of it. If you were able to go to their house and see their entire bookshelves, you *might* get a sense of them as a person -- but a single book tells you as much about someone as the color of their shoes. Let alone the fact that most book covers aren't representative of the book itself.
This is one of great beneficial side effects of e-readers -- they can hide what it is you're reading, allowing you to enjoy a book in peace. Yet there is still the danger of someone sat next to you peering over, seeing the title of the book, and sneering.
Get over yourselves, cultural snobs and sneerers. First of all, if you think reading is a good thing, then praise anybody who is doing it, no matter whether you personally would enjoy the same book. They never asked for your opinion.
And secondly, if you feel yourself instinctively starting to curl your lip, then why not make a deliberate effort actually to pick up the book they're reading next time you get the chance? You might learn something outside of your cultural comfort zone, and discover something amazing.
Here are 9 books that many people are uncomfortable reading in public -- and why the book shamers have got it all wrong.
]]>Marathon de Boston : "Heartbreak Hill", le roman qui avait prédit l'attentattag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/thenewswire//2.31102312013-04-18T12:32:13-04:002013-04-18T12:42:05-04:00Andrew Losowskyhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-losowsky/un livre intitulé Heartbreak Hill et sous-titré "Le Thriller du Marathon de Boston". L'histoire? Un complot terroriste visant à entraîner une série d'explosions pendant la course, tuant et blessant au passage coureurs et spectateurs. Un roman publié en 2002.
Quand Tom Lonergan a entendu parler de vraies explosions lundi 15 avril, il a raconté à nos collègues américains du HuffPost "avoir eu une réaction viscérale instantanée" et s'être tout de suite dit: "Oh, mon Dieu, c'est exactement comme je l'avais prédit".
Une série de bombes le long du parcours du marathon
Dans son roman, qu'il a auto-édité, des Américains d'extrême-droite menacent de faire exploser une série de bombes le long du parcours du marathon avant d'être démasqués par un détective de la brigade criminelle. Lonergan a eu l'idée de cette histoire alors qu'il courait le 100ème Marathon de Boston en 1996. Tout au long de la course, il raconte "avoir eu peur qu'une bombe puisse exploser à n'importe quel moment".
"J'ai continué de courir bien après avoir franchi la ligne d'arrivée. Le Marathon de Boston était un endroit bien trop idéal pour que les cinglés de notre époque puissent l'ignorer".
Maintenant retraité et guide bénévole à temps partiel dans un musée de Nantucket, dans le Massachusetts, Tom Lonergan est un habitué du Marathon de Boston. Il y a participé 17 fois entre 1983 et 1999. Il explique par ailleurs que le passage à l'écriture s'est fait en 2001, après les attentats du 11 septembre, car "c'était un message qu' [il devait] faire passer".
Un message qu'il compte apparemment continuer à faire passer car il déclare ne pas avoir l'intention de retirer son livre de la vente. Heartbreak Hill "représente ce que je ressens par rapport au marathon, par rapport à la ville de Boston et par rapport à la course".
"Quelqu'un aurait pu s'inspirer de mon livre"
L'auteur du livre raconte aussi que les explosions ont été particulièrement troublantes à ses yeux car il ne pouvait "pas s'empêcher de penser, alors qu'[il regardait] les informations lundi, que quelqu'un aurait pu inspirer de [son] livre d'une certaine façon".
Bien que l'intrigue du roman puisse sembler prémonitoire, il est cependant peu probable que les auteurs des explosions s'en soient inspirés. Auto-édité par Lonergan grâce à la société iUniverse, le livre n'a pas été vendu à beaucoup d'exemplaires d'après l'auteur.
Coïncidence ou non, cette histoire vient s'ajouter à celle de la couverture de l'album rap Party Music de The Coup qui, préparée au mois de juin 2001, montrait les tours du World Trade Center en train d'exploser.
NOTE : L'auteur n'a pas cherché à se faire la publicité grâce aux évènements de Boston. Nos collègues américains l'ont contacté après avoir découvert l'existence de son livre sur Slate.com. Les liens présents dans l'article ont par ailleurs été insérés par nos soins et non à la demande de l'auteur.
]]>Marathon de Boston : "Heartbreak Hill", le roman qui avait prédit l'attentattag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2013-04-18T12:32:13-04:002013-04-19T05:36:09-04:00Andrew Losowskyhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-losowsky/un livre intitulé Heartbreak Hill et sous-titré "Le Thriller du Marathon de Boston". L'histoire? Un complot terroriste visant à entraîner une série d'explosions pendant la course, tuant et blessant au passage coureurs et spectateurs. Un roman publié en 2002.
Quand Tom Lonergan a entendu parler de vraies explosions lundi 15 avril, il a raconté à nos collègues américains du HuffPost "avoir eu une réaction viscérale instantanée" et s'être tout de suite dit: "Oh, mon Dieu, c'est exactement comme je l'avais prédit".
Une série de bombes le long du parcours du marathon
Dans son roman, qu'il a auto-édité, des Américains d'extrême-droite menacent de faire exploser une série de bombes le long du parcours du marathon avant d'être démasqués par un détective de la brigade criminelle. Lonergan a eu l'idée de cette histoire alors qu'il courait le 100ème Marathon de Boston en 1996. Tout au long de la course, il raconte "avoir eu peur qu'une bombe puisse exploser à n'importe quel moment".
"J'ai continué de courir bien après avoir franchi la ligne d'arrivée. Le Marathon de Boston était un endroit bien trop idéal pour que les cinglés de notre époque puissent l'ignorer".
Maintenant retraité et guide bénévole à temps partiel dans un musée de Nantucket, dans le Massachusetts, Tom Lonergan est un habitué du Marathon de Boston. Il y a participé 17 fois entre 1983 et 1999. Il explique par ailleurs que le passage à l'écriture s'est fait en 2001, après les attentats du 11 septembre, car "c'était un message qu' [il devait] faire passer".
Un message qu'il compte apparemment continuer à faire passer car il déclare ne pas avoir l'intention de retirer son livre de la vente. Heartbreak Hill "représente ce que je ressens par rapport au marathon, par rapport à la ville de Boston et par rapport à la course".
"Quelqu'un aurait pu s'inspirer de mon livre"
L'auteur du livre raconte aussi que les explosions ont été particulièrement troublantes à ses yeux car il ne pouvait "pas s'empêcher de penser, alors qu'[il regardait] les informations lundi, que quelqu'un aurait pu inspirer de [son] livre d'une certaine façon".
Bien que l'intrigue du roman puisse sembler prémonitoire, il est cependant peu probable que les auteurs des explosions s'en soient inspirés. Auto-édité par Lonergan grâce à la société iUniverse, le livre n'a pas été vendu à beaucoup d'exemplaires d'après l'auteur.
Coïncidence ou non, cette histoire vient s'ajouter à celle de la pochette de l'album rap Party Music de The Coup qui, préparée au mois de juin 2001, montrait les tours du World Trade Center en train d'exploser.
NOTE : L'auteur n'a pas cherché à se faire la publicité grâce aux évènements de Boston. Nos collègues américains l'ont contacté après avoir découvert l'existence de son livre sur Slate.com. Les liens présents dans l'article ont par ailleurs été insérés par nos soins et non à la demande de l'auteur.
]]>Future Of Print: 'Fully Booked: Ink On Paper' Showcases Amazing Innovations In Physical Books (PHOTOS)tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2013-04-17T08:09:36-04:002013-04-17T08:09:41-04:00Andrew Losowskyhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-losowsky/The future of print is a bright one, as my new book, Fully Booked - Ink on Paper: Design and Concepts for New Publications (Gestalten, $60), attempts to prove.
It's a showcase of innovative physical book designs from around the world co-edited by Robert Klanten, Matthias Hübner and myself. Below is an edited version of my introduction, a message from a parallel universe similar yet a little different to our own. -- Andrew Losowsky, Senior Books Editor, The Huffington Post
Let me state this for the record: The internet is not dead. Digital will not disappear. Print will not kill the web.
It's easy to forget that, when physical books were invented, professional websites first ignored them, and then laughed at them as a niche pursuit for geeks. Now here we are, and the same writers are declaring the Death of the Internet, as the hype and excitement surrounding print and paper travels inexorably around the world. News companies have even themselves rushed into creating 'news-papers', long before any clear business model has emerged to pay for them. We are in a print world now.
It has changed so many things in our lives that it can be hard to remember a time before print, when everything was digital. Yet doing so is the only way to understand exactly why and how print became so important, so quickly.
Of course, when the first companies started to print books, they were pale imitations of the on-screen experience, near-perfect reproductions of the visual language of digital without any of its functions or its essence. People who grew up with digital laughed at these early iterations, dismissing the idea that print could ever have a value beyond being a pale echo of the digital reading experience. They would never, they swore, read a book printed on paper. It simply wasn't the same experience as that with which they'd grown up.
However, print began to take off among the elderly and the young, the former embracing the simplicity and highly limited demands of interactivity offered by print, while the latter came quickly to understand the near-limitless freedoms granted by physical ownership.
The phenomenon of handmade scrapbooks grew, as teenagers realized that with print, images could be cut out, remixed, stuck with glue into collages without having to break the rights management on a digital device, while others soon learned they could write whatever they wanted alongside the text in the privacy of their homes, without a publisher or platform limiting, monitoring and perhaps sharing their words.
People have now come to understand that once a print book is purchased, they truly own their personal edition of that story. There are no limitations to what they can do with it or to it. There are no licenses (though early print publishers tried, absurdly, to insist on including some with their titles), no terms and conditions that must be applied to how we will use a book. Keeping a book requires no legal contract whatsoever.
At last, with print books, we have come to understand what it is like not to be forever leasing information. We can destroy, lend, scribble, mail our books from one country to another in ways that digital platforms stubbornly refuse to permit. If we decide to change the make of our digital device, we need to re-purchase or re-license "our" ebooks, movies, music all over again; but print books remain accessible no matter how or where we choose to read them. It is truly an "open" platform.
No wonder most publishers and technology companies initially fought in the courts against the inevitable rise of print - they feared how it might rewrite the contract between creator and consumer. They were right to be afraid.
There remain a few people who say that they wish print could be uninvented. It could certainly be argued that our lives in those exclusively digital days were simpler and less cluttered. Information only existed in its digital form, connected to everything else in a single click, filled with links to a thousand other sources that then led you to other sources, distractions piled upon distractions. The rabbit hole never ended, and we never wanted it to end.
Everything that we read back then was shareable instantly and globally, but, though we never realized it at the time, all of that information had little or no actual presence. A single link on, say, Facebook was hard to pick out from a constantly updated stream of hundreds of other links, photographs and ideas. We lived in the river, a few of the drops making contact with our skin while the rest flowed by, unseen and uninterrupted.
Even if someone personally sent you a particular URL via email or Twitter, the nature of the exchange was swift and more than a little soulless. There was no sacrifice and little effort implicit in the exchange. Its association with the formless nature of the medium cheapened the information itself, no matter how important or meaningful its intent.
Today, we can give someone a real book as a gift, we can lend them our personal copy of the text, we can physically place the stories into their hands and their homes in a far more personal and memorable way. By occupying space, by having weight and heft, by utilizing smells and tactility as part of their own stories, books have impact.
There is much we can learn from information that isn’t always changing and striving to "improve" itself. Through static text, we can witness the changing nature of human thought in action, and follow cultural and ideological shifts. Without the permanence of print, we can only do this through digital scraps gathered by university libraries and the Internet Archive. Data without true fixity is as reliable as a hard disk – which means it can be instantly accessed, easily wiped, often replaced, and occasionally corrupted, deliberately or no.
Thanks to print, reading itself has become a more solitary pursuit, with a renewed focus. Unlike an ever-reproducible digital file or webpage, a physical book is a solitary experience that can only be enjoyed by one person at a time. When we finish a book, we close the cover and are left in peace; there is no online store pushing us instantly to buy and read more. There are no in-book purchases to be made as we read. No advertisements will ever pop up related to our reading experience. No videos or chat windows or alerts attempt to distract us from our internal thinking processes. Numerous studies have shown that since the arrival of print, people’s ability and duration of maintaining attention on a single idea has increased. Print is literally changing how we think, and how we look at the worlds around us.
Today, we are surrounded by an entire print-based landscape, with books being published in all subjects you can imagine, in virtually every language. No longer the preserve of craft nerds and design fetishists, now books can be found in virtually every home in the western world, sold and read on what seems like every street corner. There are pocket books and coffee-table books, paperbacks and hardbacks. There is no turning back.
Little if any of this was in the minds of the early print pioneers. Now, however, no company working in the digital space can ignore what print has brought to our lives, and print has reacted accordingly. The two are engaged not in a fight, but a dance. Print or digital? That question is as redundant as asking which is better, red or green? We are in a print AND digital world, and they are better for each other's existence. By watching and learning how and why people love each medium, the strengths of one is learning how to overcome the weaknesses of the other.
In the case of digital, those strengths include connectedness, ubiquity, unlimited and near-instant supply, multimedia capabilities, multiple input possibilities via digital devices, shareability and the option to include near-constant updating of information, thereby emphasizing the fragility of "the fact." As for print, its strengths include presence, physicality, lack of compatibility issues, complete ownership of the object, the unchanging and private act of reading, personalization and the inclusion of smell and touch as part of the experience. These are complementary functions of existence.
Thanks to the new energy and ideas provided by print, we now see that far from being at its zenith, the digital age is just getting started.
We are entering a new golden age of reading, in all of its forms. Long live print.
See images from Fully Booked: Ink on Paper:
]]>Boston Marathon Book: Tom Lonergan Predicted Bombs In Self-Published Thrillertag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2013-04-17T00:03:30-04:002013-04-17T09:04:26-04:00Andrew Losowskyhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-losowsky/Heartbreak Hill. Subtitled "The Boston Marathon Thriller," the novel was about a terrorist plot to set off a series of bombs during the race, killing and wounding spectators and runners.
When Lonergan learned of the real bombing, he told The Huffington Post via email on Tuesday, "I had an instant, visceral reaction to the events. 'Oh my God, just as I predicted.'"
In his self-published novel, right-wing American extremists threaten to explode a series of bombs along the marathon route, only to be foiled by a homicide detective. Lonergan had the idea for the plot while running the 100th Boston Marathon in 1996, during which, he said, "I feared a bomb would be triggered at any time that day."
"I ran myself well clear of the finish line before stopping," he said. "The Boston Marathon was far too compelling a stage for the wacko dramatists of our times to ignore."
Lonergan, now retired and working part time as a museum docent in Nantucket, Mass., ran the Boston Marathon 17 times from 1983 to 1999. He said he wrote the novel after the 9/11 attacks "because I thought the message ought to be told."
He said that he would not withdraw his book from sale. Heartbreak Hill, he said, "represents my finest feelings for the marathon, the city of Boston and the sport of running."
He said the bombing is especially troubling because "I could not help feeling as I saw the news reports on Monday that someone, somehow may have been inspired by my fiction."
Though the book has a note of prescience in its plot line, it seems unlikely that the real perpetrators got the idea from Heartbreak Hill. Lonergan self-published the book through the company iUniverse. When asked if he had sold many copies, he replied, "Not many at all."
Lonergan's novel takes its place alongside cover art for the rap album "Party Music" by The Coup as an instance of art eerily foreshadowing tragic, real-life events. The record cover, prepared in June 2001, showed an exploding World Trade Center.
UPDATE: We've received many negative comments about the author using the marathon as an excuse for publicity. We first contacted the author ourselves, after we read about the book on Slate.com, and invited him to respond to our questions and to write a blogpost. Also, we included a link to his book on Amazon as context to the story. He did not request these links or any publicity for his work.]]>Book Club: Teen And Lit Issues In The Fault In Our Starstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.29512702013-03-25T11:50:07-04:002013-05-25T05:12:01-04:00Andrew Losowskyhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-losowsky/This month, HuffPost Books is teaming up with our Teen editors to read John Green's The Fault in Our Stars. You can follow our conversations and leave your own thoughts on our discussion page.
To start off the reading, Andrew, our Books editor and Liz, from our Teen section, have both shared their thoughts on why this book has had an impact on their respective communities.
Andrew says...
There are many themes and ideas within The Fault in Our Stars. In this post, I'm going to focus on two: books, and faith.
Reading and stories are vital to the tale:
* The title itself comes from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings." (other works to do the same include Frederick Forsyth's book The Dogs of War, a book about the Civil War and a Star Trek episode)
* The driving force of the narrative is centered around a fictional book, An Imperial Affliction, which speaks to the characters' suffering in a way that other stories don't ("Cancer books suck," says Hazel at one point) due to its tone and realism. How much an author has true knowledge of his characters becomes an important theme.
* There are also references to Beckett, Kierkegaard, a Richard Hugo poem, Finnegans Wake, Thoreau... it's a very literary book, without being too pretentious about its subtle nods. MetaTFIOS does a wonderful job of detailing many of the references.
* The story is in many ways about the inevitability of narrative, the cancer diagnosis setting real-world rules about what has to occur in the book's fictional setting - which leads the protagonists into a search for heroism and meaning in their journey, and within a fictional book of their own, even as their ending is predestined. In his book The Stories We Live By, psychologist Dan P. McAdams states that we all create our own personal myths as a way of helping us interpret the world and our place in it. In many ways, The Fault in Our Stars is an examination of how two teenagers try to take ownership of their stories, even while unable to escape their inevitable narrative arcs.
Take a moment to think about it all, then let me know your thoughts in the comments. (NB "I like cake" and "Kittens are cuddly" are both perfectly reasonable responses to these somewhat huge ponderings)
Liz says...
I finished reading The Fault In Our Stars on the subway, right as the train pulled into my station. I walked to my apartment with heavy grocery bags in tow, letting the book sink in. I cried for Hazel and Augustus and on every block, people stopped to ask, "Are you okay?" (This only made me cry harder.) Then, a random passerby stopped me, unzipped his backpack and handed me a bottle of beer. I just said, "Thanks." We both kept walking.
Later, I tweeted about my strange, vaguely TFIOS-related New York moment and received responses from followers who had similar meltdowns. But Rebekah, one of HuffPost Teen's high school bloggers from Ohio, responded to me by sharing her own story that stopped me in my tracks: "I read it when my doctor was talking about the possibility I had cancer. Read it five more times waiting for the results."
Rebekah is a "nerdfighter," one of John Green's young, devoted Internet followers. On Tumblr, YouTube and beyond, their voices "fight against suck," "fight for awesome," and, I hope, will help guide the Book Club conversation this month. (If you are a nerdfighter who would like to get involved, please email us here.)
I was asked to write this post because I am the editor of HuffPost Teen, and The Fault In Our Stars is a book about young people. But it is not a book about the mythical "teenage experience" for "young adults," it is a book for all adults -- be they high school students or otherwise.
With this in mind, I'm interested in learning how you react -- and relate -- to the characters and their relationships with each other as you read the story.
And, Hazel Grace. You will not be able to shake her for days and days after you have finished the book and you will ask yourself why. Please tell me, if you figure it out.
I will also share one practical suggestion, from my personal experience: If you can, read it on the subway. Everyone should experience good, loud public cry over an effing awesome book at least once.
Some big questions:
Do you feel like Hazel has a real understanding of how her mom feels? For me, their interactions were by far the most (subtly) heartwrenching -- and heartwarming -- in the book.
How did you feel about how Hazel's dad, who is pretty much always crying, coped with her illness? Hazel talks about him less, but they have a powerful conversation near the end of the book that made me want to go back and re-read their earlier scenes together.
Crooked smile aside, what was it about Augustus what made him so compelling to Hazel?
How much does it change the motivation of a character when they know that their narrative is predestined to end soon?
How much is this book about maintaining a level of autonomy and spontaneity in the face of that inevitability, even just for what Hazel describes as "a little infinity"?
Is true meaning what we insert into the spaces around the predetermined tale that is our own mortality?
Reply to these questions on our discussion page and we'll select a few favorites to lead next week's discussion. ]]>Amanda Palmer's TED Talk Contains Important Lessons For Publishers (VIDEO)tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2013-03-04T07:18:26-05:002013-03-04T07:18:30-05:00Andrew Losowskyhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-losowsky/This piece on Amanda Palmer's TED Talk is the first in a new series called Tough Love. I love publishing, but I believe that many traditional aspects of the industry are struggling - not due to the rise of ebooks, but because of the ways in which they are reacting to it and other structural changes brought about by the internet. Authors, books and publishing deserve better. It's time to get smart. If you have a topic you'd like to suggest for Tough Love, you can leave a comment or email me at andrew.losowsky@huffingtonpost.com
According to Mashable, Amanda Palmer "won" TED this year with a beautiful talk about crowdfunding and audience engagement.
Its lessons don't just apply to punk-cabaret musicians with a penchant for couchsurfing. There's a lot for big publishers to learn from her tale.
First, a little context. Publishing has traditionally been a Business to Business industry. Its primary focus was, until recently, selling books to bookstores and libraries. The responsibility of dealing directly with readers was down to the stores and libraries themselves.
However, with the rise of ebooks and social media, Amazon and Goodreads, publishers find themselves increasingly becoming public-facing brands, whether they like it or not.
In many cases, legacy publishers seem to be hopelessly ill equipped for talking directly to this audience. As brands, they often seem to have little consistency in their voice or methods. And although they exist in digital markets, much of their efforts haven't adapted to what they can offer. In most cases, mainstream publishing is making very few truly digital products - instead they're just printing on glass. It's not too late to catch up - but it might soon be.
Publishers, watch the video above, and read below. The world has changed, and Amanda is offering you a flower. Take it while you can.
(All images courtesy of TED)
]]>DRM Lawsuit Filed By Independent Bookstores Against Amazon, 'Big Six' Publisherstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2013-02-20T16:28:40-05:002013-02-20T20:27:41-05:00Andrew Losowskyhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-losowsky/
The class-action complaint, filed in New York on Feb 15., claims that by entering into confidential agreements with the Big Six publishers, who control approximately 60 percent of print book revenue in the U.S., Amazon has created a monopoly in the marketplace that is designed to control prices and destroy independent booksellers.
The complaint centers on digital rights management, or DRM, the technological lock that prevents consumers from transferring any ebook they buy on an Amazon Kindle onto, say, a Nook or Kobo ereader.
DRM comes with all ebooks sold by the major publishers, with the exception of Macmillian's Tor and Forge imprints, and it means that if a consumer decides to switch to another company's ereading device, he or she would lose access to any already purchased ebooks. DRM used to be a feature of digital music sold on iTunes, until Apple abandoned the practice in 2009.
The bookstores making the complaint are the Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, based in Albany, N.Y., Fiction Addiction in Greenville, S.C., and Posman Books of New York City, though the suit states that these stores are suing on behalf of "all independent brick-and-mortar bookstores who sell e-books."
Alyson Decker of Blecher & Collins PC, lead counsel acting for the bookstores, described DRM as "a problem that affects many independent bookstores." She said the complaint is still in the process of being served to Amazon and the publishers and declined to state how it came about or whether other bookstores had been approached to be party to the suit.
"We are seeking relief for independent brick-and-mortar bookstores so that they would be able to sell open-source and DRM-free books that could be used on the Kindle or other electronic ereaders," Decker explained to The Huffington Post by telephone.
Such a move would lead to a reduction in Amazon's dominant market position, and completely reshape the ebook marketplace.
A spokesman for Fiction Addiction declined to comment as legal proceedings are ongoing. The other plaintiffs and Amazon did not respond to a request for comment. Update: A spokesman for Amazon said that they do not comment on active litigation.
Though the independent booksellers' complaint is likely to be popular among many who follow the book industry, the three plaintiffs face a huge battle against such major players. Still, Decker said, "We wouldn't have filed it if we weren't hopeful [of winning]."
A copy of the class-action complaint is embedded below:
]]>'Representing The Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer': A Reviewtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.22951132012-12-13T14:48:21-05:002013-02-12T05:12:01-05:00Andrew Losowskyhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-losowsky/Representing the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer by Kenneth W. Mack ($35, Harvard University Press) is a look at the constructed narrative of the African American lawyer in the formation of civil rights in the USA.
As the book states,
Who was the representative Negro? It was the black person who crossed racial lines, and often shook up the expectations of a segregated society. It was an African American whose formative experience with race came in an encounter with segregated public space. It was also --- on many occasions --- a black person who was as unlike the rest of his race as possible. A segregated society often demanded that representative Negroes be racially ambiguous. But that society also demanded more. It required that they be authentic representatives of those who would never be allowed into Harvard, or the Aldine Theatre, or the Supreme Court's hallowed space. It was an experience fraught with deeply conflicted emotions and desires.
Although it's certainly readable, this is first and foremost an academic text -- there is little contextual description of relative societies of each figure profiled, as well as little examination of how those who broke new ground in desegregating the legal profession were echoed - or otherwise - by black people on the fringes of other white-dominated, white collar worlds such as politics, law enforcement or finance.
This is a text about nuance, primarily serving as important footnotes to the established history, rather than rethinking it altogether. It is, then, a book for those seeking new angles on what they consider already-familiar material, rather than a general-interest text.
The book's structure is chronological, with snappy biographies of a handful of figures (their lives outside of their profession are summarized in a couple of paragraphs) followed by detailed descriptions of court cases and their aftermath.
It's here that the book enters its most engaging territory, describing how the courtroom became both a public space, and one whose norms were outside of those beyond its doors. The rules of the court came above the social expectations of race and class, the expectation that a barrister would be treated with respect leading to almost surreal scenes where white bigots called black men "Sir", and were forced to answer their questions, while across the street they would not be allowed to sit at the same lunch counter.
And yet, Mack demonstrates that these figures were more complicated than the simplified narratives people to which wanted them to be ascribed. These were supposed to be "representations" of a people or a race, yet ones who dressed and performed as white men in a white-dominated space.
These issues were further complicated by the rise of black female lawyers, particularly Jane Brolin and Sadie Alexander, who fought for civil rights based on gender as well as race (so-called Jane Crow to accompany Jim Crow), as well as by the rise of Communism as a potential alternative to the existing hegemony, coinciding with various battles around the leadership of the rising NAACP.
In short, the courtroom was not just a place of privilege determined by skin color, but also dominated by the numerous facets that informed -- and continue to inform -- the American ruling class. Any oversimplified rags-to-riches, struggle-to-victory tale needs to be understood in those terms.
This group of pioneering lawyers didn't just help break boundaries, but also, as Mack so adeptly shows, their own stories do not fit the easy narratives we may expect from our civil rights leaders.
As the book puts it,
They practiced in a world where blacks and whites seemed to want them to be both like and unlike the rest of their race.
It was in one way a hopeless task, yet these men and women achieved important victories whose impact continues to resonate. Anyone interested in the minutiae of how that came about, in various courtrooms across the country over the past 120 or so years, will most certainly enjoy this work.]]>Hachette Book Group Employees Make 'It Gets Better' Videotag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2012-12-06T13:36:28-05:002012-12-06T13:57:55-05:00Andrew Losowskyhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-losowsky/The 'It Gets Better' Project was founded in September 2010 by columnist and author Dan Savage and his husband Terry Miller, "to show young LGBT people the levels of happiness, potential, and positivity their lives will reach." Since then, more than 50,000 user-submitted videos have been made by individuals and companies, to share their heartfelt messages of experience, hope and tolerance.
Among the latest of these is the Hachette Book Group, one of the biggest publishing companies in the world. Their video is posted above.
Excuse me, I think there's some dust in my eyes. *sniff*
]]>Why Do We Always Take Books On Vacation?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.20899992012-11-07T16:50:59-05:002013-01-07T05:12:01-05:00Andrew Losowskyhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-losowsky/
(Of course, those who use ebook readers might say, "All of the above and more.")
Every decent-sized airport has a bookstore. Each summer brings about one of the biggest annual spikes for book sales. We even have a term, "beach read," to describe a certain kind of pageturner. What is it about books that makes them such important travel companions?
Partly, it's about escape. A book is a doorway to a self-contained world in which the reader is a spectator. On one level, our participation in that world is entirely passive -- we watch as things unfold, and nobody asks anything of us in order for things to happen. There are no phones to answer, no dishes to be done, no difficult questions to answer or things to feel guilty about related to these completed narratives.
And unlike in the real world, we can hear what people are actually thinking, discover what is happening concurrently in different places, leap instantly from one character to another, peer behind closed doors, all the while wrapped up in a narrative arc neater and more linear than our true, disparate and complicated existences. Sometimes, these stories end happily. Occasionally, even happily ever after.
And yet, in the case of the best books, what happens on the page is also so involving that it demands our emotional and intellectual attention as we try to interpret, predict, imagine, understand the meaning and consequences of each piece of information. They grab us by the throat, they make us reluctant to do anything but keep reading, to find the secrets hinted at, to witness the inevitable showdown.
Just as a vacation is intended to take our bodies out of their punishing routines to rest and rejuvenate, so books do the same for our minds. They relax us, engage us, transport us.
If stress is an accumlation of guilt, responsibility, expectation and fear, so a great book is an outpouring of baser, heartpounding emotions that dissipate the moment that you close its covers.
We read to be transported away from ourselves, just for a little while, and then return back to our lives richer for the experience. A great book is the very definition of a de-stress tool. It says, "Let me take you away from this for a while," and then, like a mystical masseuse for the mind, it does so.
More on HuffPost Books:
]]>The Fetishization Of The Printed Pagetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/thenewswire//2.20898102012-11-07T16:18:15-05:002013-01-07T05:12:01-05:00Andrew Losowskyhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-losowsky/
The same number of physical books would weigh about two tons.
Ebooks aren’t only lighter than their print counterparts—they’re also cheaper, instantly accessible around the world, and unlimited in supply. For these reasons and more, the growth in American ebook usage has been swift and inevitable. Earlier this year, Amazon released figures saying that, for every 100 physical books sold on its site, it had sold 114 ebooks.
But print is fighting back. Now that physical books have lost their monopoly on long-form storytelling, they aren’t disappearing. Instead, booksellers, publishers and readers are taking a closer look at why we like books at all—for many, that feeling of loss has provided an opportunity.
Instead of killing physical books, ebooks have actually encouraged a new level of fetishization of the printed page. Beautifully made editions that sit as objets d’art on the shelf or coffee table, are rising in prevalence. Publishers are investing in more luscious, expensive print editions. Taschen makes stunning art books that are artworks in themselves, often costing hundreds of dollars. McSweeneys continues to experiment with formats and materials. The attributes that ebooks don’t do well or at all—heavy paper stocks, bookmark ribbons, book plates, artful typography, metallic foils, and stunning, colorful covers—are being implemented in what many see a new flourishing of the mass-produced book arts. Penguin in particular is repackaging classics texts that are available for free online in luscious, collective packages such as Penguin Threads (stitched covers) and Penguin Drop Caps, covers with one oversized letter in typography (A for Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and so on).
In some instances, the narratives of stories are being augmented by physical, sensory content, such as with Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer (Visual Editions), which used remarkable die-cuts on every single page; Chris Ware’s Building Stories (Pantheon), a box of 14 different graphic novel publications in a wide variety of shapes and sizes; or Anne Carson’s Nox (New Directions), a poetic collage to her deceased brother that opens into a 192-page accordion-style fold-out. To make Violentology, a book about violence in Colombia, American publisher Umbrage had the pages printed on the press of a legendary newspaper bombed by drug baron Pablo Escobar, and hand-sewn by a local bindery.
What makes them different from their digital counterparts?
It may be stating the obvious, but books exist—in a way that memory on a microchip does not. Enduring physical presence is no small thing in an age when information appears on a screen, then changes, evolves, and at times even disappears. And as efficient as ebook retailers are, clicking to purchase is a fairly soulless affair in comparison to the pleasures of browsing in a bookstore.
As Anna Gerber and Britt Iversen, publishers of one of the hottest new book art companies, Visual Editions, said in an interview with website The Experts Agree, “We think it’s the right time, in terms of how we read, how books are being made, how books are being thought of, to be publishing visually rich books that also tell wonderful stories.”
This might be a generational anomaly, created by those with nostalgia for print and libraries, soon to disappear once the digital natives are in charge. Or this might be the moment where print, freed from its need to do everything, becomes even better at doing what it can do uniquely.
In the years to come, if you want to know why physical books and bookstores seem more special than ever, maybe you should thank Amazon.
This story originally appeared in Issue 22 of our weekly iPad magazine, Huffington, in the iTunes App store.]]>Why Ebooks Are Inspiring A New Age Of Printtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2012-10-29T11:01:36-04:002012-10-29T16:58:49-04:00Andrew Losowskyhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-losowsky/according to a computer scientist at UC Berkeley, who calculated in 2011 that a 4GB ebook reader filled with 3,500 ebooks weighs a billionth of a billionth of a gram more than if it were empty of data - a difference that is approximately the same weight as a molecule of DNA.
The same number of physical books would weigh about two tons.
Ebooks aren't only lighter than their print counterparts, they're also cheaper, instantly accessible around the world, and unlimited in supply. For these reasons and more, the growth in American ebook usage has been swift and inevitable - earlier this year, Amazon released figures saying that, for every 100 physical books sold on its site, it had sold 114 ebooks.
However, print is fighting back. Now that physical books have lost their monopoly on long-form storytelling, they aren't disappearing. Instead, booksellers, publishers and readers are taking a closer look at why we like books at all.
A series of new titles out this fall celebrate the book and the bookstore, including The Books They Gave Me (Free Press), My Bookstore: Writers Celebrate Their Favorite Places to Browse, Read, and Shop (Black Dog & Levanthal), Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (FSG), My Ideal Bookshelf (Little, Brown), Judging A Book By Its Lover (Harper Perennial), One For the Books (Viking) - celebrations of reading and owning physical books.
What makes them different from their digital counterparts?
It may sound obvious, but books exist - in a way that memory on a microchip does not. Enduring physical presence is no small thing in an age when information appears on a screen, then changes, evolves, and maybe even disappears. And as efficient as ebook retailers are, clicking to purchase is a fairly soulless affair in comparison to the pleasures of browsing in a bookstore.
For many publishers and booksellers, that feeling of loss has provided an opportunity.
Instead of killing physical books, ebooks have actually encouraged a new level of fetishization of the printed page. Beautifully made editions that sit as objets d'art on the shelf or coffee table, are becoming more prevalent. Publishers are investing in more luscious, expensive print editions. Taschen makes stunning art books that are artworks in themselves, often costing hundreds of dollars. McSweeneys continues to experiment with formats and materials. The attributes that ebooks don't do well or at all - heavy paper stocks, bookmark ribbons, book plates, artful typography, metallic foils, and stunning, colorful covers - are being implemented in what many see a new flourishing of the mass-produced book arts. Penguin in particular is repackaging classics texts that are available for free online in luscious, collective packages such as Penguin Threads (photographs of custom stitched covers) and Penguin Drop Caps.
In some instances, the narratives of stories are being augmented by physical, sensory content, such as with Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer (Visual Editions), Chris Ware'sBuilding Stories (Pantheon) or Anne Carson's Nox (New Directions). To make a book about violence in Colombia, American publisher Umbrage had the pages printed on the press of a legendary newspaper bombed by drug baron Pablo Escobar, and hand sewn by a local bindery.
As Anna Gerber and Britt Iversen, publishers of one of the hottest new book art companies Visual Editions, said in an interview with website The Experts Agree, "We think it’s the right time, in terms of how we read, how books are being made, how books are being thought of, to be publishing visually rich books that also tell wonderful stories."
This might be a generational anomaly, created by those with nostalgia for print and libraries, soon to disappear once the digital natives are in charge. Or this might be the moment where print, freed from its need to do everything, becomes even better at doing what it can do uniquely.
In the years to come, if you want to know why physical books and bookstores seem more special than ever, maybe you should thank Amazon.
This article will appear in a forthcoming issue of Huffington magazine
]]>'The Tempest' At The Met: No Happy Ending In Sighttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.20171932012-10-25T11:42:58-04:002012-12-25T05:12:01-05:00Andrew Losowskyhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-losowsky/
This new operatic interpretation of the story by Thomas Adès is therefore as problematic as Shakespeare wrote it, only without much of the poetry of the play's original words. Adès's score is dissonant and filled with harmonic clashes - in other words, rhythm and melodies that are far beyond this opera-naïf reviewer. Fortunately, though my ear never tuned into their sound, it did at least fairly quickly tune them out so that they didn't become overwhelmingly unpleasant.
So, a new opera whose narrative is troubling, whose music I describe as "not overwhelmingly unpleasant," with often uninspiring lyrics. Yet I had a fascinating evening filled with powerful theatrical moments, thanks to the intelligence and complexity of its staging by Canadian director Robert Lepage.
Perhaps best known for his controversial 2010 reinterpretation of The Ring Cycle, his background is in innovative theater and magical, technologically complex staging, including a one-man Hamlet and an oft-cited Midsummer Nights Dream that took place in a mud bath. His fans love his inventive trickery; his critics accuse him of gimmickery. This production will probably change nobody's mind about his work.
For this production, he has his young Prospero (Simon Keenlyside, effective enough), the usurped Duke of Milan, magic up a miniature version of La Scala opera house from Milan itself on the island. The shipwrecked boat is filled with wealthy elite dressed for the opera, forced onto the stage, then backstage, searching, lost, in a quest for the status quo to return, represented by them taking their rightful place in the audience of an opera.
In other words, this is an exploration of carnivalesque, the world turned upside down, manifested in an examination of functions and machinery of the opera house itself. The set changes throughout, giving views both from the stage and at the stage, at one moment behind the scenes and, finally, a vision of auditorium, stage and backstage all at once in a remarkable side-on cut away, one of the most thoughtprovoking and unexpected set designs I've ever seen.
What this is intended to mean defies easy interpretation, yet it doesn't feel unnecessary or in conflict with the story, and it led to what this reviewer felt were some visually stunning tableaus. The only ineffective piece of staging in this production came with Ariel's transformation into a sub-Spider-man monster, with the help of a chandelier. (Other than this moment, Audrey Luna's Ariel is the star of the show, especially as the score demands regular singing in an octave higher than any I've heard.)
Some say Lepage's artfulness distracts from the stories he stages. In this instance, it is his direction, and the skill of his company La Machina, that not only rescue the production, but make it an essential ticket for anyone interested in the creation and artifice of theatricality on a grand, Met-sized scale.
But unless you're a fan of modern dissonant compositions, I'd recommend taking along some discreet headphones and an iPod.
Check out some notable productions featuring a play within a play below: ]]>Frankfurt Book Fair 2012: What I Learnedtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.19639572012-10-13T16:07:12-04:002012-12-13T05:12:01-05:00Andrew Losowskyhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-losowsky/The Frankfurt Book Fair is the world's biggest trade fair for the book industry. This year, there were more than 7,000 professional stands at last week's fair, showing off their latest titles and technology to distributors, literary agents, printers, media and publishers in a wide variety of languages. Around 300,000 people attended during its five days.
Talking to people, I found that the general mood seemed fairly optimistic, especially following a couple of economically depressed years where doom and gloom were more prevalent. Publishing hasn't disappeared, Amazon hasn't destroyed the industry (though their name is still whispered in a tone not dissimilar to that of Voldemort's.)
Though Frankfurt's reputation is as a place for big deals, most of the deals were actually done in the build up to the fair, turning the event into more a series of announcements, plus a few smaller territories getting a greater level of attention than in previous years.
Also, print isn't dead. In America, it's easy to think that print is on its way out, but currently Germany has very low ebook penetration - between 3 and 10%, while in Italy, it's less than 2%. Though ereaders will certainly move into these markets, it might take several years for them to take hold.
That said, ebooks are now very much part of the conversation, rather than a bizarre friend of a friend that publishers pretend they don't know when they see them. This is a good thing.
This was my first year at Frankfurt, and I went courtesy of the Book Fair itself in order to speak at the StoryDrive conference, a side event dedicated to crossmedia creations.
I spent four days walking around the vast halls, and here's what I learned: