If the novel is struggling in this new environment, what of literary magazines? Long extinct? The opposite: literary magazines are getting popular again. What’s going on? Are young people suddenly discovering the London Review of Books? Hardly. It’s currently £27m in the red. In fact, mention the LRB to anyone under 50 and you’re liable to send them into a deep coma.
HAH.
This blerg post in the Guardian is a pretty surface look/hypothesis into/about this whole The Internet is Good for Books theory that I WILL ESPOUSE FOREVER.
It is like, a day old so already irrelz but I had it open on a tab (okay?!) and then also was opening all this mail I’d been getting at work, which suddenly includes all of those BULK MAILINGS which I now understand too well, (and also now have to second guess the biz decisions of any publisher who SENDS PAPER IN THE MAIL WHEN THEY DON’T HAVE TO, JESUS YA’LL//sorry interns)—ANYWAY, so I open this envelope from the London Review of Books, and obviously I am pretty jazzed to be on their direct mailer list, regardless of whatever potentially nefarious business practices led to me being there, (or more likely, whatever shameful mailing list I signed up for in a moment of weakness/social pressure), because under 50 and liable to be sent into a deep coma* or no, I know that the LRB is a lot like the NYRB, but in London, which means it’s fancier.
Anyway so I am reading these actual letters from the publishers basically begging you to subscribe—and they’re very compelling letters! these people are obviously quite good at the putting together words to make us feel feelings Thing (Oh god the Poetry magazine one! I almost wanted to quote it on my blog—and not in a making fun of it way!) but not quite privy to the Your Desperation is Showing thing, maybe, or too far gone. Whatever, I feel bad for them. I am on Team LRB. Or was! WAS iN THEORY BECAUSE THEY SEEMED LITERATE AND FANCY!
until this stupid mailer! This piece of paper!
“DOES THE WRITTEN WORD STILL MATTER?” and then they compare it to “tweets”. First of all: don’t say tweets, LRB, it’s unbecoming. Second of all, treatises? Shaddap. Thirdly, you are motherfucking how many millions of dollars in the hole? I’m mad at you so I will not even scroll up on my own post to check, but I think you and I both know it is not the time to be smug!
You need the internet, LRB! The internet will help you not send unsuspecting Young People into comas at the very mention of your name! You sent me and I am sure way too many other fools this dumbo discount mailer thing about how you wanted to grow your audience of intelligent readers and now you are creating some false dichotomy between the internet and your Old People Fanciness and you’re asking me to pay 30 bucks for it?
Q: DO YOU EVEN TWEET?
A: THEY DO TWEET. They have about 9k followers. And they were kinda funny about the coma thing.
Wish they tweeted treatises. Also wish their direct mailer strat was more along the lines of um, 1. Don’t MAIL SHIT // use the Internet to find a new audience/community or 2. um, maybe mailing shit works so, fine, benefit of the doubt, but if you have to please do not be like UGH WHO READS THE INTERNET, ANYWAY? WE’RE SMARTER THAN THE INTERNET because the Internet is the futuuuuuure and the future is not broke. has venture capital!
*(CAN WE ALL AGREE TO AIM A *LITTLE* HIGHER W. OUR SIGNIFIERS OF BOREDOM?)
