End of an era, the Russian émigré literary intellectual in New York: dense, refined, unapologetically lettered. I used to see him seated at a table chatting with people who looked like Russian writers. RIP.
Category: Yevgenia Krasnova
I don’t even read academic reviews of my OWN books.
It was the Black Swan. Recursion…
Gratitude to @JeffBezos : my Saga. 1) As an author, I owe Amazon. Before, publishers were subservient to bookstores & their book placement. So when I wrote FBR *on my own terms* it was a problem: fictional characters, math discussions, philosophy… Was it popularization? No. 2) Was it about finance? No. It’s about what? So no publisher. I found a weird outfit who accepted at ½ price. Bookstores were good at ignoring my work: why should a neighborhood bookstore isn’t interested in higher things, just moving books. Amazon did not have rigid shelves! 3) There is this romantic idea of the neighborhood bookstore out to save literature, social life, & thinking: these people survive on books that have a specific public. So the “monster” that drove them bust allowed me to get an audience I would’ve never had. 4)The worst were standard book editors whose employment is to make sure no author ever write on her/his own terms. They lectured me about “focus” (Me: “is your business to focus or to sell books”?). I exist (as an author) bec. of AMZN. Stores did everything to make me extinct. 5) By the time I moved FBR to RH the scenery had changed. I was lucky earlier publ went kaput. Publishers adapt. Not bookstores. It remains that the publishers model is to sell a lot of books quickly, then repeat.The notion of Lindy books is rare & hard to account for.
Armenian cover. Somehow I care the most about translations into: Greek, Armenian, Italian, Levantine, (plus Turkish, Maltese, Persian …)
I managed to copy the format… IKEA-Billy, nothing more complicated: shelves must be white and unintrusive. Bookshelves is not a piece of furniture: books are.
Random shelves sort
He means that it was an unpredictable success. Which is why the book Yevgenia wrote was called “a story of recursion”…
I like it that John Clesse likes my books. But I like it much much better that he both likes my books and hates Pinker’s.
How much does it sell for?
