Friday, February 10, 2006

The Publishing Contrarian

I forget how many new blogs there are each day: 475,000 is it? Something big, anyway. But here's one which is at least written by someone who's been there and done it, and was not too impressed by what she saw along the way.

Lynne W. Scanlon, apart from looking quite yummy in a photograph, has written three nonfiction books with total sales exceeding 600,000 copies. She was a group publisher at A/S/M Communications and a consultant in marketing and special sales to Barnes & Noble Books. And now she's started a blog, The Publishing Contrarian.

In one of her early posts, Publishing & Google & the 10% Imperative, Lynne tells us that publishing executives aren't really interested in getting to grips with change. 'They seem to be more concerned with big paychecks, stock options, bonuses, Callaway Golf Clubs, tee times, the Beach Club, the status quo and The State of the Prostate.'

Ah yes. I agree with all that, except the last bit. Let us not mock those who worry about their prostate. You're talking to a man here who's had two hernias and a TURP. So watch it.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Feeling grumpy?
Look to the prostate.

Anonymous said...

don't laugh about the big P... The topic of frequent bladder activity has begun to make nervous little appearances in the conversation of all my male contemporaries (late 30s). That's progress; now we start worrying about the prostate before we're even middle aged...

Anonymous said...

600,000 copies?
Of what, fighting Jet lag?

Anonymous said...

Funny thing.
I began my Light Over Newmarket with a man whose lungs were packed with cigarette smoke, a bum foo-foo
valve and a wife who wanted to argue.
Would have been better to start George Orwell's way, I suppose,
"Marriage to the joyless Hilda was becoming a nightmare for George Bowling"--but it was more complicated than that.
The man had a bum prostate. Or so his doctors told him. And their treaments and tests weren't doing the hero any good. They seemed to have a way of making him sicker.

To make a long story short, the um,hero does a Gaugin, goes to a sunny clime, finds a mistress, gets a good snogging and finds that with the natural antibiotic of the sun and an accommodating mistress, that his prostate problem had vanished completely.He is not sure how this Aztec sun, irradiated spa water and near god-send mistress had affected the cure, but cured he was.

One minor point. He had gone to Mexico by himself, a "separate vacation." There was now the minor detail of dealing with the mistress,with whom he had gotten entangled and the slight problem of a wife who found out.
Fixed his major appurtenance, but totally ruined his marriage. From physical problem to really serious psychological damage. A loves B, but is now getting serious cannon fire from C.
The American solution wuld have been to sue the doctors, but instead, he inflicts pain upon himself by disengaging from both mistress and wife. Notbeing strong enough to handle all this, he ends up with a complete nervous breakdown.
It sounds a little like classical Hogarth, but the man was really no rake. His body seemed to be telling him what to do, but there were social circumstances.
So, out there, put up with the doctors, take a South Seas vacation, but bring your wife.
Or at least be strong enough to survive, prevail and pee like a firehose.

Anonymous said...

You guys are too funny!