I owe some of you an
apology. It's this whole LinkedIn thing. I guess I just don't get it.
After closing Baker
Johnson, Inc. in 2005, every article I read about finding work
insisted the key to re-employment was the internet. Trade groups had
work available sites (PrintWorkers.com
– less than one posting per month), and newspaper ads were said to
be useless because of Monster.com
where most all jobs were listed in the 21st
century (I tried Monster but I was too old for all the positions
listed for the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard, which
made up about a third of all the ads). Most importantly, one must use
the worldwide web to network, network, network.
At the time I read that
LinkedIn was the best place to network to let people know your
talents were available, so the more people you linked to, the faster
you'd be hired. I went to town and invited lots of friends from the
print industry to “link” to me and accepted a lot of invitations
from friends in the publishing industry and...nothing happened.
But I was comfortable
being on LinkedIn in a very passive sort of way. I'd get occasional
emails inviting me to link with someone and while I felt no urgency
to do so, I wondered if anger or disappointment would result from my
inaction. Then reality kicked in and I thought, “Get real!”
And there were emails
letting me know whenever someone I was linked to had linked to
someone else. It began to occur to me that the exponential growth of
the whole thing was getting out of hand so that at some point I would
have maybe just four or five degrees of separation to anyone in the
whole damn world!
Then late last year I
started getting the darndest emails. A friend in Hawaii had
“endorsed” me, then a friend in Illinois posted a “new skill”
(except it wasn't new at all, she'd always had it since I'd known
her). What was this? An endorsement? I tried it and endorsed someone
but the idea that my endorsement, by checking a little check-box,
would make or break anyone's status page was absurd. I tried to
recommend someone, but met none of the four requirements needed to
recommend someone...as if my recommendation actually mattered either.
So now I've slowed down
on accepting LinkedIn invitations. It's a bit out of my league. For
those I'm linked to, you already know that I never post anything new
anyway.
And while web
sites and my email newsletter subscriptions tell me the key to
all riches lies in social media, I freely admit that Grub Street
Printing doesn't
Face on Facebook
Space on MySpace
Redd on Reddit
Tweet on Twitter
Digg on Diggit
Share on InShare
Stumble on StumbleUpon
Tumbl on Tumblr
Pin on Pinterest
Chime on Chime.In
Eat on Delicious
Inst on Instagram
or attempt any other form
of social networking on Grub Street's computer except speaking with
you on my Skype phone. Having a chance to talk with you is about all
the digital networking I can handle, and I do enjoy it.
Penguin
Moves to Dismiss Lawsuit
Having
purchased publishing services company Author
Solutions (a den
of scamsters?) last year, Penguin
has filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit for breach of contract
(among other things) and remove Penguin itself from the suit
altogether. Penguin and Random House plan to
finalize their merger this month.
Fonts
for Dyslexics
I
know some of you think I go on a bit about fonts, but you can see in
this
article
how a font can influence the ability of the reader to scan across
words with clarity and comprehension.
Is
Barnes & Noble Terminal?
Many
industry
watchers
believe B&N may be struggling through its death throes. B&N
is losing sales, has had to
stop offering some Nook models
and saw its stock
tank 17% in one day
last week. B&N executives deny their stores are carrying
significantly fewer titles, although evidence
suggests that's true.
Paula
Deen and Selling Books
While
the headlines are about the
businesses that are trying to distance themselves from Paula Deen
(like her publisher Ballantine/Random House, book retailers Target
and Walmart) Amazon
reports pre-orders for her next book (due in October) and her current
best-seller are #1 and #2 right now. What will Ballantine do? Not
supply books?
Adobe
Creative Cloud: Friend or Foe?
Certainly
a lot of conversation about Adobe's Creative Suite becoming a
subscription cloud application. According to this
article,
designers are extremely wary about the change but most printers deal
with the problems as they encounter them and move on.
King's
Print Only Book a Pirated Ebook
Stephen
King thought his latest book Joyland
should be available as a conventional book, sold through bookstores
but a
pirated ebook became available within days of its release. Lesson
learned?
“I
Hate Books!”
Anna
North, the culture editor for Salon.com posted
her thoughts on the ease of reading ebooks as compared to the old
clunky way that made you do insipid things like turn pages. The
culture editor? I assume she prefers .mp3s to live music also.
Tumblr
Poetry
Apparently
paid editors had poetry all wrong, and didn't understand the criteria
people would judge it by, because it's
thriving on Tumblr, where volunteer editors curate the verse, and
whose motto is “Follow the World's Creators.” Click here
to sign up.
Algonquin
Continues Literary Tradition
Decades
ago the Algonquin Hotel served
as a meeting place for New York City's writers. Now, Simon &
Schuster has worked with the hotel to create a
S&S themed suite on the 7th
floor as well as present readings from some of its current
authors.
Who
Do You Link To?
A
number of British authors and publishers are
chastising some others in the industry for linking their web
sites to Amazon or other online retailers, ignoring smaller brick and
mortar booksellers.
I
Don't Get It
A
reader of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest
did a
neat job of trimming their copy to remove all the page numbers. I
have no idea what “freedoms” he was after but I'm pleased he
seems free at last. And I do enjoy the
far-ranging comments posted about his rebellion..
A
Dearth of English Majors?
There's
a growing
sentiment in some political circles to decrease funding for some
Liberal Arts programs since the employment situation for their majors
can be erratic and perhaps that indicates that those areas of study
offer less value to society.
But
I was always pleasantly surprised by how many English majors (like
myself) found their way into book manufacturing. Now it seems that
even without political maneuvering a
degree in English is losing its luster. I wonder where the
Garrison Keillors of tomorrow will come from?
Final
Thought
It
is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will
be when you can't help it. Oscar
Wilde
