The Worst Sellers

Five small publishing houses organized a debate at the recent Madrid Book Fair, about their books that didn't sell well (less than 200 copies). Without doubt, was to intend not to repeat - the reasons of the failure. But the real debate is another: why is it a failure selling little?

From the company or, rather, the business point of view, the answer is obvious. Nevertheless, some publishing houses do not always behave merely as a business concern or companies. There exist, as Schiffrin reminded us in his 'The edition without editors', publishing firms dedicated to contribute to the country quality literature in it's most critical sense. To do that one mustn't follow the current, but to try - not always successful, or only at long term - to side step it.

From the artistic point of view, one supposes that literature aspires to become art, but that won't do. What has book sale got to do with quality of the book? We enter here a debate as ancient as repetitive. Seems that nobody contributes anything but the old or the new topic. The old is taking for granted the relativeness between quality and sale, as in the meeting of writers in Ubeda last March. One of the themes was Literature of the masses and Literature of quality. The new topic is, as the story goes, when a lady editor approached an author who was visibly afflicted by the bad review given to him by critics: "But why should it bother you what they say, when you have sold 200,000 copies?" But it mattered to the author as he believed he had written a good novel, and the critic is the one who says whether he had done that or not.

ame as a film. I guess. The one that is most successful commercially with the highest box-office sale is not necessarily the best film artistically. Same with an art piece, or the most popular anything need to be the best.

Tag:worsesellers

Current Mood: Calm

Prague Is Shaping Up ...

When a 31 year old nurse. Petra Kalivodova, was considering whether to renew her contract or not with the private clinic in Prague, the offer of special extras contributed to seal the deal: complementary German classes, 5 weeks of vacation, free liposuction and silicone breast implants.

What little knowledge I have of the city is limited to what I have read in prints or seen on films when Prague was mentioned or featured briefly. I know it's the capital of the Czech Republic, it's an ancient city by it's reputation as The mother of cities, or that it's the City of hundred spires; and I know it has rich culture by another name given to it as The Golden City. More recently there had been bits and pieces of periodic information that the city is, at least part of it, now ultra modern, like all other well developed and technologically enhanced cities. But to offer an employee benefits like liposuction and breast implant must be more modern than most.

"I prefer plastic surgery to a car" said Petra cheerfully, never would I be otherwise able to permit myself the luxury of such operations with my €1,000 monthly salary. Given that their sanitary system is facing extreme shortage of nurses, hospitals and clinics have to resort to unusual incentives to retain their workers, including unorthodox offers. In this particular case and other similar ones, having beautiful and curvaceous nurses serve as good investment as well as effective advertising, no doubt.

I have known about a mother in England who bought her 15 year old daughter silicone breast implants for her birthday. I can just see companies offering breast implants instead of gift vouchers, and lucky draws in parties or charity functions with prizes of all kinds of plastic surgery; you pick out a ticket and it says new nose when yours is perfect, and the bald headed man opposite is staring at his ticket that says size 38D breasts.

Tags:breastimplant

Current Mood: Blah

Life Style

There are few expressions so well installed in the social code of life, at the same time so diffuse or vague as 'lifestyle', or style of one's life. It defines the bubble like word 'style' when it's applied to life. It has nothing to do with how well one can love, kiss, work or even die. The essence seems to be how well one lives according to the tendencies.

The life style represents a series of matters or things that inspire hedonism, the doctrine that man's chief moral duty lies in the pursuit of pleasure: travels, gastronomy, art, designer products, compulsive shopping ... at the same time marks the taste and habits to the point that it interfere with the way of the daily living. Your life style is marked by the quality of settee cover and the carpet is genuine Persian or not, the presence or absence of the best quality China on your dining table, or the brand of shoes you wear.

Strictly speaking all that has nothing to do even with the person who owns all the exquisite luxuries, as those acquisitions are more for display, for the benefit of others, to be appreciated, admired, envied. When totally alone, I am sure he would prefer to wear his oldest and the most comfy slippers than the designer labelled crocodile skin shoes. So for some of the time anyway, these same people whose life style is admired or envied by so many are just as ordinary as all the rest of us who have no style whatsoever to speak of.

Tag:lifestyle

Current Mood: Blah