Remaking Publishing One Meme at a Time: An Interview with Publishers Brunch

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Don’t take the Instagram account Publishers Brunch at their word when they assure you in their bio that “this is a joke i promise.” Not to say the account isn’t full of publishing in-jokes. Charming lo-fi memes targetting pay inequity, hackneyed market trends, brand-conscious novelists, and lucrative book deals for far-right demagogues don’t correct systemic injustices and a culture dedicated to poor taste, but PubBrunch is clearly motivated to highlight the industry’s wrongdoings and spark interest in collective employee actions like walk-outs, salary-sharing, and union organizing. Publishers Brunch is a shitposting account, but a deadly serious one. “Wait, it’s about unionizing?” asks the astronaut looking out at an Earth labeled “publishing meme accounts.” “Always has been,” replies his pistol-wielding colleague.

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Bites: A Woman’s Wit, James Franco is on Daytime TV, So What?, Aerosmith Understands the Internet, and more

The New York Times reviews “A Woman’s Wit: Jane Austen in Life and Legacy” on exhibit at The Morgan Library & Museum. Lit. Even though there are approximately one billion newly published food memoirs per American second, everyone’s still obsessing over Jonathan Safran Foer and his book about that ultra-modern idea of vegetarianism. Wells Tower is also still writing for Outside Mag. According to the Rumpus, this is one example of why fiction writers make good journalists. The Guardian reviews […]

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Bites: Is New York Bad for Writers?, Should Bookstores Rethink Shelving?, East of Eden as Performance, the Death of the Man of Letters, How to Get Rid of Hipsters, and more

HTMLGiant asks if New York for writers is The Place to Be, or whether it’s just too damn expensive. Lit. Should bookstores shelve by publisher rather than author? (Thanks, The Rumpus) How East of Eden became a performance piece. A surprisingly interesting picture essay of the last 10 years of Nobel Prize winners in literature. The “slow death of the man of letters”? Hm. Shakespeare’s endless Answers: Why it’s smart to be a Shakespearean fool. Books as art. Very cool. […]

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