Back when I studied creative writing in college, I submitted a packet of poems that I had written, one of which I typed out on a long piece of toilet paper. I think I was trying to make some kind of statement about the message versus the medium, but hindsight tells me I was just pretentious and lazy.

Judging from this, perhaps I should have pursued the idea a bit further.

Koji Suzuki, the author of The Ring and Dark Water (both published in America by Vertical), has published a novella in Japan called Drop that is printed, as you can see, on toilet roll.

Two things:

A) This will save you taking the sports section into the loo with you.

B) I like this a LOT better than ebooks!

(via HarperStudio)

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But Elizabeth Blumele, blogging over at PW’s Shelftalker, offers a primer on how to read customers.

I don’t think it’s anything that we haven’t thought of or done ourselves, but it’s a nice refresher, especially in these times when no customer can afford to be taken for granted.

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I don’t know about you, but I hate it when there is a common theme with book covers during a given time. Some seasons it will be pictures of feet, or shoes, and another it will be close ups of lips. It’s as if only five people designed books and they all rip each other off.

Except for Chip Kidd, who can do no wrong.

To get an idea of how different designers can approach the same book, check this out.

In the UK, Penguin had a contest to update the cover of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, with first prize being £1,000, and what sounds like a six-week internship in their design offices.

Below is the first prize winner. To be honest, I don’t quite know if this deserves the top slot, as I like quite a few of the also-rans better.

Still, this is a fascinating insight as to the possibilities in book cover/jacket design.

(via GalleyCat)

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Charlie Jane Anders has an interesting post over at io9, about science fiction writers who serialize their works and rely on the generosity of readers to donate using PayPal accounts as tip jars.

I seem to remember Stephen King trying something like this, and how it ended up. It wasn’t a financial failure for King, who is thought to have netted more than $600,000 from his foray into reader-subsidized online serializations. However, the number of paying readers diminished exponentially with each chapter released.

Still, if a writer of modest talent can achieve a devoted following and make even $10,000 over the course of their serialization, they’d be doing better than a lot of  authors who work with bonafide publishers.

(image from pastelpoetry)

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Before the solicitations for the Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett drop-ins arrive in our emails/fax machines?

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While this isn’t gasp-inducing clairvoyance or technology, it is fun.

Presenting: BookSeer-The Magic 8-Ball for Bibliophiles!

(via Gizmodo)

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So, is this a case of people who grew up reading Harry Potter moving on to harder stuff, or is it a case of people who enjoy fantasy, but are starting to find unicorns and gnomes a bit on the wimpy side?

Whatever the reason, the new burgeoning genre (or, to be more precise, escaping from the margins of genre into the mainstream) is Urban Fantasy. Readers who find the saga of Bella and Edward a bit too saccharine can find more of an edge in the exploits of vampire hunters and wizard private investigators.

On Salon.com, Laura Miller has written a thoughtful primer on the genre for those that are new to it. Some of the series that she writes about have been in print since the late 1990’s, but, again, for the wider audience, this is new territory.

A book that isn’t mentioned in the article (because it hasn’t been published yet) is Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim. I’ve written about this book before, and I’m telling you, if the books in Ms. Miller’s article piques your interest, you should call your Harpcollins rep and beg him or her for a galley now!

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Chuck Klosterman will be reading at Boswell Book Company this Thursday evening (June 25th).

Proprietor Daniel Goldin wants you to be there and to bring as many friends as possible.

While I have never met Daniel, I have met Chuck and he’s every bit as cool as you would expect from his writing. If you happen to be roaming N. Downer Avenue on Thursday, why not stop by? Daniel and Chuck will be glad, and so will you.

Can you think of a better way to help establish a fledgling bookstore?

(I have no idea where the photo of Chuck originates, but I swiped it from Boswell and Books)

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I swore that I was going to lay off writing about the Kindle for a while.  It seemed like there wasn’t much left to gripe about, and, once they introduce a color version, with a honking huge memory and a media player, then all of my dislike would simply evaporate.

Not so fast! A blogger over at Gear Diary posts about his struggle with the Kindle’s nebulous digital rights management (DRM). The blogger was going to update his Amazon kindle purchases from his iPod touch to his brand new iPhone 3GS. Unfortunately, for some of his titles, he hit the maximum number of downloads permitted.

In short, if you buy a Kindle edition of a book, you are permitted to download only a certain number of times. This sounds reasonable. However, if you decide to upgrade your equipment (Kindle 2.0 to Kindle DX, let’s say), you will be restricted as to how many times you can re download the same title.

When you compare this to Apple, which under their old DRM, would merely limit the number of devices you could keep a song on (and you could always change which devices these were), this is pretty screwy.

But, for once, this doesn’t seem to be Amazon’s fault. Instead, it is up to each individual publisher to establish these limits.

Chalk another round up to old fashioned paper-and-ink books!

(via Gizmodo)

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In another example of “I can’t believe that this isn’t getting more attention”, Publishing Perspectives features an interview with Mexican-American author Luis Alberto Urrea, where he states that he was told by the Mexican government not to tour there for his new book Into the Beautiful North (Little Brown 9780316025270 $24.99) out of fears that he could be kidnapped.

The larger point of the interview is that the narco war happening in Mexico is much worse than we are hearing about, lest Americans be discouraged from trips south of the border to Senor Frogs.

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