Tuesday News: Kickstarter, Harper Lee’s enduring royalties, Big Data, wedding jumpsuits, and Leafmarks
Publishing Projects Find Success on Kickstarter – I’m not sure how I feel about this, frankly, but apparently Kickstarter has become quite the launching pad for book projects. The article provides a list of some of the standouts, but in all,
“More than 6,000 publishing campaigns were launched on Kickstarter in 2013, including over 1,600 works of fiction and nearly 1,000 children’s book projects. In all, contributors pledged $21 million to publishing endeavors (up from $15 million in 2012), with an average pledge of $3,540 per backer.” Publishers Weekly
Imagine Making $9000 A Day From Something You Did 50 Years Ago… That’s What Harper Lee Did – Given the fact that Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird still sells between 750,000 and 1M books per year, I wonder how many American schoolchildren have not read this book. Lee was given a Christmas gift of enough money to take a year off and write anything she wanted. The result was To Kill A Mockingbird, and although her editors told her it would likely not sell past a few thousand copies, Lee has sole more than 30M books globally.
“According to legal papers filed against former book agent Sam Pinkus, in the first six months of 2009 alone Harper Lee earned $1,688,064.68 in royalties. Assuming 2009 is an average year, that works out to $3,376,129.39 per year. That’s $9,249 per day! That’s 4.5 times what Sting earns in a day from “Every Breath You Take”.” Celebrity Net Worth
Why Big Data Doesn’t Live up to the Hype – An interesting piece on the limitations of big data. Despite the fact that “Data eclipsed God in 1973” in frequency, and therefore “suggests a culture that treats it as a surrogate divinity,” Nick Romeo notes that big data produces a lot of trivial observations (at one point Bill Clinton’s name was a frequently used as the word lettuce), but falls short as an interpretive filter:
“To their credit, Aiden and Michel freely acknowledge the distortions inherent in their device. For one thing, people who write books tend to write about other people who write books, so the Ngram data often exaggerate the cultural prominence of academics and authors. It’s also easy to confuse correlation with causation. Did the increasing frequency of the word “zombie” contribute to the rising occurrence of “the future,” was the causation reversed, are the trends unrelated, or do both reflect a deeper cause?” The Daily Beast
J. Crew’s bridal jumpsuit is the hottest new wedding trend of 2014 – I’m hardly a wedding-in-white kind of girl, but this J.Crew wedding jumpsuit looks to me more like pajamas than nuptial wear. Hella expensive pajamas, but loungewear, nonetheless. So what do you think? Ready for a look like this one to hit Romance novels everywhere?
“At $750, the J. Crew option is much more affordable for many brides in comparison to conventional bridal gowns with prices generally in the thousands. Unlike a princess gown, a bridal jumpsuit can be worn to celebrations way past the big day giving you amazing bang for your buck.” StyleList
Leafmarks – the Goodreads replacement? – I know that a number of readers have migrated back to Goodreads from BookLikes, so if you haven’t already heard, here’s a pretty new site that apparently promises to provide an experience similar to that at Goodreads, including the ability to curate books and reviews. I just cannot believe that Goodreads is the only thing out there, but it’s going to be interesting to see if people are willing to leave the site for good, given the time it’s going to take to build anything else to the level Goodreads is now.
“Leafmarks is by far the closest you’ll get to the Goodreads experience with a clean and user-friendly interface, missing from the old fashioned LibraryThing, and you can tell just by using it what type of features will be available in the future, given time to further develop the site.” Literary Ames
Wow, the JCrew outfit basically looks like…a $750 white, lacy pants and top set. Way overpriced. I bet you could find something similar for less than $100 elsewhere on the web with a little googling. Though, that goes for all bridal wear. You do not have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on quality bridal clothing — especially if you are going with a non-traditional dress or suit/pants set.
I will look at Leafmarks. I genuinely did want to use something other than GR but Booklikes format just was not for me.
I actually think the JCrew jumpsuit is pretty cute – a lot cuter than I was expecting when I followed the link. Though I personally wouldn’t get married in it! Not unless I did about a million squats leading up to my wedding and had the highest, tightest butt in the church. Because jumpsuits are not exactly forgiving, and I’m just imagining the self-conscious feeling of standing up in front of everyone with their eyes on my glutteus maximus!!
@Diana:
I was disappointed by the jumpsuit. I was thinking slinky, long lines. This looks like a cute summer outfit, pants and top. I agree, overpriced and not quite what I would wear if I was going a non-traditional route.
I also cannot believe how much people spend on wedding gowns. I did some homework and found a great deal. Then again, my entire wedding probably cost a fraction of what people tend to spend. (Save it for the honeymoon! And a house!)
For $750 you could have a custom dress made that would be far nicer than that jumpsuit.
The jumpsuit would be fine for the hen party or maybe the rehearsal, but way too casual for a walk down the aisle.
RE: The J. Crew jumpsuit wedding ensemble – I can just imagine myself being buttoned up and ready to go when suddenly, I really would need ‘to go’! On the other hand, it is an interesting fashion departure from the norm.
I spent a grand total of $100 on ebay for my wedding dress – and I’ve had two different people borrow it because they loved it.
Small train, corset string back, and cheap. (And because of the shoelace-like back, I can still say I fit in it… :))
So, nobody’s ready to “Say Yes to the Jumpsuit” yet?
The 80s called to congratulate you on your fine taste in wedding attire.
I like the wedding jump suit. I think it’s playful for a fun none too serious ceremony. Not everyone needs a big wedding dress and a long boring ceremony. I keep going to wedding with two hour ceremonies and three or four hours spent at the church, (by the fourth hour everyone is naseous.) It looks that wedding might actually be fun to attend.
I think people seem overly judgmental and bitchy over the wedding jumpsuit. On your day, wear what you want. On someone else’s day, they wear what they want.
I don’t have a problem with a jumpsuit, the best wedding I ever went to was one were my cousin (the bride) wore jeans. I do however think that this J. Crew jumpsuit is overpriced for what you get when you buy it.
My taste runs more to traditional wedding dress — I don’t even like lowcut or sleeveless ones — but to each her own.
I can’t imagine personally spending that much money on ANY outfit, including the one I would wear to be sworn in as President of the US.
My wedding dress cost less than two hundred bucks, and at least half of that was for the gorgeous handmade Venetian lace I splurged on — one quarter yard! I carefully cut out the panels and had them applique’d onto the gown, which my best friend’s mother made as a wedding gift. (I still have a few scraps of that lace tucked away somewhere). I made my own veil, and a matching satin and lace cover for my MiL’s prayer book, which I carried instead of a bouquet. (*very* traditional, as I said.)
I just think that any woman with the figure to carry that jumpsuit off would probably look better in practically anything else. But it isn’t MY wedding…
@Emily: I don’t think anyone’s saying no one should ever wear a jump suit on your wedding day…if that’s what you want, go for it. But why wear a jumpsuit that costs $750? That’s insane, sorry.
I made my wedding dress, hand-embroidered and everything.
@Emily:
It’s a piece of clothing. I doubt it cares how it’s judged or how bitchy anybody gets.
I think I know maybe 3 people who could wear that jumpsuit well.
What I don’t get is why they just didn’t make it a skirt. Construction would be easier, more people could wear it.
But then it wouldn’t have gotten the press.